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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25457638">Limits</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Fool_in_Love/pseuds/A_Fool_in_Love'>A_Fool_in_Love</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A+ Parenting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Can Feel Emotions, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Connor Needs A Hug, CyberLife (Detroit: Become Human) is Terrible, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Drama, Dysfunctional Relationships, Early in Canon, Gen, Hank Anderson &amp; Connor Parent-Child Relationship, Hank Anderson and Connor On A Case, Hank Anderson is Bad at Feelings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:54:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>40,100</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25457638</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Fool_in_Love/pseuds/A_Fool_in_Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Elijah Kamski used thirium-310 to power biocomponents, he pushed through the limits of what was possible. Now androids were making decisions, asking annoying questions, solving crime, and predicting the future...<br/>But who cared when the world was falling apart? Humans would be lucky if they didn't run themselves into extinction, and androids were part of the problem. Hank isn't falling for any of CyberLife's manipulative schemes where they tried to get you to empathize with a thing that was just a pile of wires and plastic. Real people didn't bleed blue.<br/>Connor agrees. He knows what he is and what he isn't. For some reason that pisses Hank off.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Connor &amp; Gavin Reed, Hank Anderson &amp; Connor, Hank Anderson &amp; Connor &amp; Sumo, Hank Anderson &amp; Jeffrey Fowler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>134</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. If true; if false</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I know... I have too many stories going on. Thank you for clicking and I hope you enjoy :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“... with a service contract that will remain in effect throughout the duration of the lease agreement, so any unauthorized repairs will... Holy shit, that’s a lot of zeros. Blah blah, no access to the base code, no security breaches, what the hell do they think we are? Terrorists?” Jeff looked up from the thick binder full of the pages from the lease agreement. He shook his head and grumbled, “How the hell did the legal department even wade through all this garbage?”</p><p>“If you ask me, all of it’s garbage,” Hank scowled. He had a pounding headache and quitting time couldn’t come fast enough.</p><p>The CyberLife representative cleared her throat and gave them both a customer-service-smile. “On-site training was part of the agreement,” she said. “You’ll find that the RK800 is quite different from the older generations of police androids.”</p><p>“Let’s just get a move on already...” Hank sighed.</p><p>“Right,” she said. Catherine. That’s what her name was. A skinny blonde thing with too-thin eyebrows. The guy sitting next to her gave her an encouraging smile then took over talking. “Since you’re already familiar with the details of the agreement, let’s move on to technical specifications, shall we? We’ll start with the user-interface. As you may be aware, most androids are voice activated and need to be prompted before other sensory modalities can be engaged. For instance, a house-keeper android like an AK might not react to a stack of dirty dishes unless it had been specifically instructed to clean them or had been given an order to clean them whenever they were dirtied. During set-up, CyberLife speeds up the process by helping the user to choose from a variety of pre-set functions to activate or deactivate on the first start-up. That isn’t the case with the RK800: it isn’t voice-activated and it has no preset commands.”</p><p>“So how is this thing supposed to do it’s job?” Jeff asked dryly.</p><p>The guy, probably an intern or something by the look of him- he couldn’t have been more than 25, just smiled at him. “While it has no preset commands, it does have the full suite of law-enforcement programs as well as a list of specialized programs that were unavailable until now. Most of them were designed by Elijah Kamski himself. Unlike the AK, the RK800 will integrate information from the environment and utilize its AI’s decision-making algorithms to determine which programs are kept active and which routines to execute.”</p><p>“In English, please.”</p><p>The intern’s eyebrows drew together briefly then he rephrased: “It chooses what to do on its own, Lieutenant, though it responds to direct commands as well.”</p><p>“Great,” Hank rolled his eyes. He’d seen what counted as independent decision making in machines before: stupid vacuum cleaners that ran into walls and surgical errors all over the news. Fuck that. “So what you’re saying is that it’s going to need a fucking babysitter.”</p><p>The intern shook his head. “Not necessarily a babysitter... The RK800 has been field validated in alpha-testing, but this is still a beta. Legally, we have to recommend that the RK800 unit be supervised during interactions with humans and be securely stored during off-hours, but I assure you that it has highly sophisticated software...” Hank crossed his arms but said nothing, so the kid continued: “As I was saying, you won’t need to provide as much direction to this model and you will find that it asks questions and speaks without prompting. Don’t be alarmed when it happens.”</p><p>“Does the thing come with a mute button? I don’t want that thing going off every five seconds like a damn Furby.”</p><p>The intern pressed his lips together and Catherine glanced at him. “Just tell it to be silent and there shouldn’t be any problems. There are no automatic random comments or questions: it only speaks when it has a reason to.”</p><p>“I’ll believe it when I see it... Anyway, let’s hear the rest of it, huh? I don’t want to spend all day listening to tech talk.”</p><p>Catherine nodded at him with a smile and Lieutenant Anderson wondered how many years you had to be in customer service before you got to shrug off assholes like him without so much as a scowl. “Go ahead, Connor.”</p><p>“Right,” the intern said and straightened his tie. Definitely under 25. “Excuse me for being so long-winded... I’m new. The only other thing I should tell you about the user-interface is that the RK800 has a status indicator light like any other android: blue is good, yellow is busy, and red is bad to put it simply. If you suspect an error, just ask the unit what the problem is or ask it to run a diagnostic report. You are also encouraged to contact CyberLife Support...”</p><p>Blah, blah, blah....</p><p>“Lieutenant?” Connor asked.</p><p>“What?” Hank asked with a glare.</p><p>“I asked if you had any questions...” The kid looked like a kicked puppy and Hank sighed.</p><p>“Nope,” he said with a sullen scowl and said nothing more. Jeff gave him a look but fuck it: he didn’t want to be there so it was Jeff’s fault.</p><p>“If you say so. Feel free to ask the RK800 any questions you might have: it has full access to its operation manuals and can offer technical support for most issues.”</p><p>“Why don’t we continue this over coffee?” Jeff suggested, bless the man. The four of them shuffled out of the conference room and Catherine led the way down the street to some fancy place that ground its own beans or something. It was on CyberLife’s dime, so he got the biggest and most caffeinated thing he could find. All it needed was a shot of whiskey. The android at the till gave them a blank, mechanical smile and Hank flipped it off.</p><p>“I understand that this is more work than is involved when buying an android from one of our stores,” the intern said sympathetically. He gave Hank a small shrug with the corners of his lips curled upward just slightly. “I’m sure you’re very busy...”</p><p>“Yeah,” Hank muttered and headed for the booth where Jeff’d claimed a spot. “Look, kid, you and me both know I’m not going to remember shit about the plastic you’re peddling so let’s just get this over with.”</p><p>Connor lagged behind and Hank slid into the seat next to Jeff. “What the hell is that?” He asked.</p><p>Jeff lifted his mug in cheers. It looked like the whipped cream on top was trying to compete with CyberLife tower it was piled so high. “If I’m getting coffee out, then it might as well be good.” When the kid finally sat down it looked like he’d gone for classic cream and sugar. He stirred it and then licked the spoon like a child. Hank snorted. Well, it wasn’t like he was the model of professional behaviour. Catherine raised her eyebrows at him and he put the spoon down again sheepishly.</p><p>“I do have some questions,” Jeff said. “The legal team has hammered out all the contractual agreements, who’s liable for what, and so on. What I want to know is why us? If you’re telling the truth about the specs, then why not partner with the Feds or the military or something? We’re just city police.”</p><p>“CyberLife was founded in Detroit,” Catherine explained. “Though much has changed since then, we strive to remember where we came from and give back to the city.”</p><p>“Giving me a pain in the ass,” Hank muttered. Jeff jabbed him with an elbow.</p><p>“Alright... We’re already tying up a decorated officer monitoring the android’s performance. You say that it should be supervised, but how hands-on are we talking here?”</p><p>“The unit will require minimal user intervention,” Catherine assured them. She woke her tablet up and called up a 3D rendering of a generic, blank-skinned android. “You won’t even need to provide maintenance or remember to charge. The RK800 takes care of its own daily and weekly maintenance. It will also be sending regular reports to CyberLife, eliminating a lot of unnecessary paperwork. CyberLife’s goal is always to minimize the mundane tasks in peoples’ lives, freeing your time for more valuable pursuits.”</p><p>With two fingers, she spun the model android and zoomed in. “In case someone does need to access the system manually, there are ports at the back of the neck. Here is where the unit can be connected to a charging cable directly if an inductive charger isn’t available. This is for connection to a computer, and it’s compatible with any operating system. We don’t recommend it because they often don’t have the memory or processing power to keep up with the reports. It’s always preferred that you contact CyberLife for assistance, since our techs will have some administrative access that’s locked to users and specialized hardware. Here, at the base of the head, is the manual reset. A key is provided in the start-up package that fits neatly into this slot...”</p><p>Catherine went on talking about functions and forensics and fancy algorithms and shit while the intern listened and stirred his coffee a second time, but Hank began to tune her out again. All the coffee in the world wasn’t enough for this kind of boring-ass meeting. It felt like forever before they made it back to the office.</p><p>“Right!” Catherine chirped. It went right through Hank’s pounding skull. “If you’re ready, we can move on to set-up and register you in its system.”</p><p>“It’s already done,” Connor interrupted in a soft voice. He stood up and folded his hands behind his back. “Jeffrey Fowler: Captain of the Detroit Police Department, Precinct 1, Post 9667. Previously Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and Sergeant First Class in the Army. Hank Anderson: Lieutenant. Graduated top of his class as Valedictorian of his police academy. Youngest Lieutenant in Detroit’s history.”</p><p>Catherine nodded her approval. “RK800, register Lieutenant Hank Anderson as immediate supervisor.”</p><p>“Got it,” said Connor. He looked at Hank and smiled, then extended a hand. “I look forward to working with you, Lieutenant.”</p><p>Hank shook his hand before he realized what he was doing. “What the shit...” He looked at Jeffrey who gave him a look that said <em>I don’t fucking know.</em></p><p>Connor stood still while Catherine did something with the side of his head and when her hand pulled away it was lit up with the bright blue from an LED. Hank watched dumbly while she got a jacket from the box by the projector screen and Connor shrugged it on. It had a reflective arm band and a model and serial number splashed right across his chest. If Hank didn’t know any better, he would have said he saw a hint of a smirk.</p><p>“Nope. Fuck this,” Hank said simply, then he stood up and walked out.</p><p>“Lieutenant, wait!” The android was trotting after him, so Hank stopped in the middle of the hallway and pushed him back with a heavy palm on his chest.</p><p>“What the fuck is this?” Hank growled. “Is this some kind of fucking joke?”</p><p>Connor looked dismayed. It shouldn’t be able to do that. “No, it isn’t. I took part in my introduction only because it might help you to see that I function differently from other androids. If I hadn’t, there was a risk that you wouldn’t make use of my full potential.”</p><p>Hank wound up and punched. Connor’s head snapped to the side and he took a step to keep his balance, but he didn’t fight back. He lifted one hand to wipe the blue shit off his lip. Hank shook out his stinging hand. “You bleed blue alright. Well I’ll be damned.”</p><p>Connor pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. Who the fuck carried handkerchiefs? Should have been a dead giveaway. Now that Hank was looking properly, he could kind of see it... The way he’d listened to Catherine, the way he never fumbled his words when he spoke, and he never did drink the coffee did he? Fucking shit. “I’m sorry if I offended you in any way, L--... Where are you going?” He dogged Hank’s heels like an annoying chihuahua.</p><p>“To get drunk,” Hank said. Back toward the conference room, Hank could hear Catherine and Jeff talking. Probably more techno bullshit. If Jeff wanted to reprimand him later, then fine: it was worth it if he could go get a drink. “Fucking androids.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Reflection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hank lengthened his stride to get away from the android, but the thing only hurried up. Outside it was biting cold... Like fuck he was going back for his damn jacket though, so Hank gritted his teeth, hunched his shoulders, and stomped his way to the parking lot. His shoes crunched on half-frozen puddles, and so did the android’s as it trotted behind him.</p><p>“You’re on duty, Lieutenant!” It protested.</p><p>“I don’t need a God damn calendar app, thank you,” Hank snapped.</p><p>“I’m not! I’m simply pointing out that it would be highly inappropriate to get drunk right now.”</p><p>Hank reached his car and unlocked it before turning around and pushing a finger against the android’s chest. “Go. The fuck. Away. Now. That’s a fucking order.”<br/>It stood there, feet shoulder-width apart and hands folded behind its back. There was a beat where Hank thought it might insist, but its eyes wandered over Hank’s face and down to his hands and back and it nodded once. “Of course, Lieutenant,” it said. Its attention visibly disengaged and its tone sounded less like a needy rookie and more like a machine should sound: emotionless and cold just like the fucking ice on the parking lot. The thing turned around and left, just like that, and Hank snarled at its back. It was so fucking anti-climactic his anger had nowhere to go except toward slamming his car door shut once he got in.</p><p>“Stupid fucking plastic prick...” Hank growled.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor spent a moment looking around at the vehicles, the grey clouds in the sky, and the bleak concrete before walking back into the precinct through the front. It was warmer there, the floor was polished, and there were humans and screens scattered through the lobby. He walked up to the reception desk, noted the other android’s model and designation, then transferred his own information wordlessly.</p><p>“Go right in,” the android said with a gesture and Connor proceeded through to the office. He integrated his welcome at the DPD with his reception at the Phillips’ residence, thinking of Caroline’s alarm at realizing he was an android and of Captain Allen’s rudeness. More data required.</p><p>He drew a few curious stares but he ignored them in favour of locating Captain Fowler and Chloe.</p><p>“Excuse me,” he said while pushing the door to Captain Fowler’s office open.</p><p>Apologetic</p><p>Unobtrusive</p><p>Angry</p><p>“I’m sorry for the disturbance earlier. Unfortunately, I was unable to stop Lieutenant Anderson.” The two seemed unruffled, though Captain Fowler had some lines of tension around his face and shoulders. He didn’t seem outraged or surprised.</p><p>
  <em>Lieutenant Anderson is temperamental?</em>
</p><p>Connor took a spot standing behind Chloe’s chair and observed.</p><p>“I suppose not even an android could wrangle him into doing his job,” Captain Fowler grumbled without looking at Connor. “It was impressive, at least. Passing for human while undercover might be useful. I can’t say we’re off to a great start, though.”</p><p>Chloe stood and smiled at Connor who returned it with a sense of relief. “The overview of my functions is complete?”</p><p>“More or less,” Chloe admitted. “Copies of your user guide have been forwarded on.”</p><p>“I should have known he’d react poorly... People don’t seem to enjoy mistaking me for human.”</p><p>“No, they don’t, do they?” A little, more genuine smile played around her lips and she turned back to Captain Fowler. “I’ll leave the RK800 unit in your care, Captain. Will you see to it that its owner receives it?”</p><p>“I’ll do my best,” Captain Fowler sighed. “We’ll be in touch if anything comes up. Once again, I apologize on his behalf.”</p><p>Chloe was quick to reassure. “Not a problem, Captain. Goodbye, Connor.” She left with grace and Connor watched her go for a moment longer than necessary. There was no supervision here. If he likened the officers around him to the SWAT team on the roof then at least there was observation, but as of now Amanda was his only link back to CyberLife. Without an immediate mission to accomplish he felt a prickling of uncertainty.</p><p>“I look forward to working with you, Captain Fowler. I’m sorry for upsetting the Lieutenant. I do hope that we’ll be able to form an excellent partnership.”</p><p>“Don’t get your hopes up. Hah. What am I saying? You’re life-like, that’s for certain. RK800, you’re on standby until Anderson gets back. The desk across from his is yours.”</p><p>“Thank you, Captain.”</p><p>The office was spacious and clean, with huge windows that looked out into the city. Connor headed toward them and looked out. The sky in daylight was unremarkable, and it was.... disappointing. Grey and overcast, it had been brighter and more vibrant 47 levels below ground. He caught sight of his own reflection and straightened his hair before surveying the room and scanning name plates. Standby would be much more unpleasant if he were to spend it like the other androids he could see lined up against the wall.</p><p>“Officer Wilson?” Connor smiled at the seated officer who pushed his chair back. For a second, Connor thought he might say something: there was a mix of confusion and recognition on his face, but it left and the officer looked around.</p><p>“Hey guys, this android’s talking to me...! What’d I do?”</p><p>“I just wanted to know where I could find Lieutenant Anderson’s desk,” Connor said.</p><p>“Oh. Uh... Right over there,” Officer Wilson pointed.</p><p>Introduce</p><p>Thank</p><p>Picture</p><p>Roof</p><p>An introduction would be proper, but the formality of it might make things more awkward. Thanking him and leaving wouldn’t help his social integration. Asking about the picture of Officer Wilson’s family would be friendly. The roof might bring back unpleasant memories.</p><p>
  <em>The hum and rhythmic thumping of the helicopters. The radio chatter. A shriek as the deviant started to fall and Connor made the choice to die. It had been the right thing to do. Air rushing past and falling and falling with a calculation of his velocity on impact assuring him that he would be shut down quickly running in the edge of his awareness.</em>
</p><p>Connor smiled and broke his formal posture to lean over against the desk and gesture. “This is a nice picture. Is that your family?”</p><p>“Yeah, it is...” There was still confusion and hesitance in Officer Wilson’s voice, but he visibly softened in response to the topic. “My wife and baby. Damian’s three months now.”</p><p>
  <em>He picked up the framed photo and identified Caroline, Emma, and John Phillips.</em>
</p><p>“He’s cute,” Connor said. “Um, thank you for the direction.” He straightened up and retreated toward the Lieutenant’s desk, which he could already see was full of clutter.</p><p>“No problem,” Officer Wilson called after him.</p><p>The mess on the desk was informative. A quick scan identified the points of greatest interest: newspaper clippings, stickers, doughnuts, music, an old baseball cap, dog fur on the chair...</p><p>“Would you look at that! The new toy got here.” Detective Gavin Reed, age 36, DOB October 2, 2002 said in a jockular tone.</p><p>“Hello, detective,” Connor greeted neutrally while he ran some assessments. “My name is Connor. I’m the android sent by CyberLife.”</p><p>“At least it’s better than the broken down pieces of crap the city buys us,” the detective remarked to Officer Tina Chen. “Go get me a coffee, Tin Can. Chop chop.”</p><p>“What kind of coffee? There are a lot of variations of that drink...”</p><p>“Aren’t you some fancy new model? Figure it out.” He smirked and while Connor walked toward the vending machines in the hall he could hear the detective say in an aside: “Watch it run all over the place like a Roomba.”</p><p>The coffee machine wasn’t there, so Connor went toward the break room. On his left: the coffee machine. It was a little ironic, Connor thought while he pushed the button to activate it. While it poured, Connor went to the refrigerator. Haphazardly, it was stuffed with take-out boxes, bags, plastic containers and beverages. Thankfully, the communal shelf was labelled and Connor retrieved the cream. The television in the corner was just background noise as he filtered the input automatically and let his programming discard anything irrelevant.</p><p>“Here you are, detective,” Connor smiled. He sat the completed coffee onto the corner of Detective Reed’s desk and looked to him for feedback. After a few moments he pushed his chair back and glared.</p><p>“What do you want, plastic? Get the fuck away from me.”</p><p>Had he passed or not? The lack of resolution couldn’t annoy him- not really- but it did leave an unnecessary reminder in his tasklist.</p><p>The station never went still, and when the day-shift trickled out, the night-shift trickled in. Not so much into the investigations section, though, and the menial tasks finally stopped. Sitting at “his” desk, Connor rolled his quarter across his knuckles restlessly. Soft sounds of talking and typing made a quiet, white noise and he could smell more coffee and the unfamiliar scents of human food being warmed by microwave radiation. It was so different from CyberLife’s R&amp;D area. With a short look around, Connor stood from his chair and walked to the window again. White, hard-edged patches on the glass were the reflection from the harsh office lighting but beyond that, he could see lights. Lots of lights in the darkness. For a moment he thought they might be stars, but they were just artificial lights from vehicles, windows, and poles along the roads. The sparkling streams of automobile lights moved like electricity in a circuit. He took another breath and released it. He could feel his liquid coolant and thirium circulating at optimal speed and pressure, the gentle thump-thump of his artificial heart, and the faint humming of his biochemical regulator as it pumped small quantities of essentials that would keep his biocomponents functional. Right now, his programming was insisting that he investigate and his signals were being adjusted accordingly. He needed to move and to think.</p><p>He returned to his investigation of Lieutenant Anderson’s desk. The anti-android propaganda was baffling given how useful androids were, but Connor filed that away for later inquiry. Who was his owner and what would their working relationship be like? Connor had been programmed to integrate himself with humans but... It might be more of a challenge than expected.</p><p>Any access to records from Connor’s terminal would be suspicious, Officer Wilson was likely to leave directly on time whenever possible, and Lieutenant Anderson didn’t seem to be the type to stay after-hours... Connor narrowed his eyes at Lieutenant Anderson’s terminal briefly, then turned away and walked to Detective Reed’s. He had no accounts or access passwords of his own yet, but he had no qualms about entering with Detective Reed’s credentials. They were easy enough to find on a terminal that recorded keystrokes. He smirked.</p><p>Who was Lieutenant Hank Anderson?</p><p>His name, age, date of birth, and rank were already known to him but he needed more. That wouldn’t be a problem.</p><p>---</p><p>Hank slouched over the bar at Jimmy’s and ignored the loudmouth asshats around him. Didn’t even talk to Jim, who knew well enough to leave him alone when he got like this. He’d been pissed, but it had mellowed into something like resentment. Fuck Jeff. Fuck androids. Fuck his damn job. He liked his work, but that wasn’t going to last with that robot in his face. Hank nodded to himself and took another drink of whiskey. What the hell. He’d been waiting for an excuse anyway. Without his job, maybe he’d finally get the balls to bite the bullet.</p><p>“Lieutenant Anderson?”</p><p>Hank groaned.</p><p>“Lieutenant, it’s me: Connor. I’m the android sent by CyberLife.” Couldn’t he get a moment’s fucking peace?</p><p>“What’d you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?” Hank asked dully without looking away from his drink.</p><p>“I received a report of a homicide and you were assigned to the case close to an hour ago. You’re the detective on call: we should go check it out.” Its voice was annoying. Soft and sort of rounded, and he talked like a nerdy college kid who’d swallowed a dictionary. Hank grunted and ignored it.</p><p>“Lieutenant, I really must insist. It’s our jobs, and I can’t investigate the scene without you.” Hank scowled at the stupid, pathetic begging and he finally looked up. Stupid android was right there beside him, dripping all over the place and giving him this hopeful look that had no right on an android’s face.</p><p>“How’d you find me?” Hank asked.</p><p>Connor smiled and Hank cursed his own curiosity. “I took the liberty of accessing your credit card history. You said that you were going to get drunk, and you’ve spent money at several bars in this area, but you made a transaction here a few minutes ago.”</p><p>He slammed his hand down on the bar and spun to face the bastard. “What the hell? That’s an invasion of my damn privacy!”</p><p>“You weren’t at home,” the android said quickly. “I tried to call you, but you weren’t answering your phone.”</p><p>“I could fucking arrest you,” Hank snarled.</p><p>“You’re upset...”</p><p>“Fucking A I’m upset! You can’t just-- Shitty fucking androids spying on their fucking owners. You aren’t even sneaky about it! You just took my fucking info!”</p><p>“Hey get that thing out of here!” Some guy in a booth shouted.</p><p>“Mind your own business!” Hank snapped back at him then turned back to the android. “Listen here, you shitty, spyware infested, no-good, messed up piece of trash! I’m only gonna say this one more time: Leave. Me. Alone. Got it?”</p><p>It was satisfying to see its eyes widen a bit before it wiped the look off its face. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. My instructions are to--”</p><p>“Shove it up your ass,” Hank snarled. He grabbed his drink roughly and downed it in one shot. Couldn’t even enjoy a drink anymore. He stalked out and the stupid thing followed him. It didn’t know what was good for it. When the door shut behind them and the android came to a stop with a backdrop of “no androids allowed” and “we don’t bleed the same colour” on the wall, Hank wound up for another punch.</p><p>It flinched.</p><p>It didn't raise its arms or step back, but it cringed away like it knew it should hurt. Hank swore under his breath. Shitty fucking androids. CyberLife was manipulative as fuck. Stupid soggy android with its goofy, pathetic face. Hank dropped his arm and glared up at the sky which was pissing rain. The wind was fucking freezing, but it blew his anger out like a birthday candle. It still glowed red and smoked, but there wasn’t any more heat behind it. Just resentment again. It was depressing; he either felt angry, resentful, or hopeless and everything else was just gone. It’d left a long time ago.</p><p>Some poor shmuck out there had worse luck than him.</p><p>“Homicide, huh?”</p><p>Connor opened his eyes and looked at him with surprise and caution, then he nodded. “Homicide. 4203 Harrison street.”</p><p>Hank swore quietly at what he was about to say: “Okay, fine.”</p><p>He turned around before he could look at what stupid expression CyberLife had programmed it to make at that.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Adjustment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Connor thought he might be happy as he sat in the passenger seat of a manually operated vehicle with fast-paced music playing and Detroit scenery flashing by through the window on his right. The Lieutenant shouldn’t have been driving, but the unpredictable and flawed nature of a human’s driving was stimulating when it went against what Connor would have expected. The music was complex and set to a rapid beat, and with the scenery moving quickly Connor could examine it at a pace more suited to his processing speed.</p><p>It was good.</p><p>Of course, he wasn’t really happy. He couldn’t be.</p><p>Still, he couldn’t help but smile a little at the lights flying past and the way the bass notes hummed through his body.</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson was quiet and registered as “tense” according to Connor’s behaviour analysis program. His first words on the drive were at its end when he parked and pointed a finger at Connor: “Stay in the car. Got it?”</p><p>“Got it,” Connor confirmed. The Lieutenant slammed his door shut and walked across the street that was made multicoloured and shining by the lights and the rain. There were no good outcomes when he had to disobey. He didn’t need to use his prediction software to know that he was about to be reprimanded. The Lieutenant must be able to investigate without Connor successfully and he might hit Connor again if he disobeyed...Their relationship would be adversely affected. CyberLife wanted him to investigate crimes involving androids. He wouldn’t know if android involvement were likely without seeing inside. CyberLife might take more of him away if he didn’t perform to standard.</p><p>Assessing priority...</p><p>Follow Lieutenant Anderson.</p><p>His first chance to prove his worth and ability to Lieutenant Anderson... Connor was reassured by the knowledge that he’d passed his alpha test. He had proof for himself that he would do whatever it took to succeed. He had learned from the mistakes of the last time. He would be efficient and he wouldn’t be distracted.</p><p>The colourful reflections, the new humans, the reporters, and the cold were pushed away. Connor focused and adjusted his settings: he would be the hunter, the analytical machine, the one who made it through quality assurance and training. The mission was all that mattered.</p><p>---</p><p>In the darkness of the attic, the smell of dust was sharp and thick and the floorboards creaked. Connor’s LED lit the room and gave him away, so he made no effort to hide himself. There was nowhere for the deviant to go. There was only one way out.</p><p>The heavy thudding of footsteps reminded Connor of the music in the Lieutenant’s car. His head whipped around and he saw a flash of red. “Stop!” Connor shouted. From below he could hear the Lieutenant asking what the hell was going on. “It’s here, Lieutenant!” Connor called his explanation already vaulting over a box. The deviant was desperate and that made it reckless while it threw an old table onto its side behind it and turned sharply to run back toward the trapdoor. Connor pushed a pile of boxes aside with a loud crash and sprang after it. His focus narrowed. The deviant had gotten close, but Connor was fast. He crashed into the deviant in a controlled ramming of the shoulder and twist of the arm that sent the larger android tumbling down. Connor could see the red glow of warning lights from inside its broken casing. A glimpse of a terrified expression in the grey light from the window and their LEDs mimicking the police lights outside.</p><p>“No!” The deviant snarled. Its face twisted into rage and it threw Connor off of it. His back hit a support beam and the deviant was on him. It landed a single punch before Connor kicked it in the chest and then propelled it backward with a hand on its throat. It was badly damaged and splattered with thirium and blood, and Connor felt savage satisfaction in the fact that his deductions had been correct.</p><p>The deviant hit him again, in the side again and again, but Connor had a strong stance and was relatively undamaged.</p><p>“Give up,” Connor commanded with narrow eyes.</p><p>“I won’t let them get me,” it said. Its teeth were bared and its LED was bright crimson. With a savage thrust it rammed its forehead into Connor’s and pushed him back. “I didn’t do anything wrong! It wasn’t fair! I was just defending myself!” Its desperation made it unpredictable. Connor heard the scrabbling of someone joining them in the attic.</p><p>“Keep away!” Connor warned. The deviant charged at the human and Connor lunged to wrench it away. It fell but it was up again quickly and its eyes darted back and forth. The officer levelled his gun- it was Wilson.</p><p>“This is the police!” Officer Wilson warned sternly. “You’re under arrest!”</p><p>Connor saw the moment of decision on the deviant’s face. It was one that said “this is my last and only chance”. Connor knew it well on himself and others and he readied himself to sprint. The deviant turned and ran. Officer Wilson discharged his gun twice. The deviant crashed through the dingy window and out onto the slanted roof. Its momentum carried it forward and it fell. Connor leapt after it without hesitation: he hadn’t hesitated at 70 and he wouldn’t now. No decisions. He snapped into action toward whatever would increase his odds of success.</p><p>They crashed into the ground in no time at all, and Connor landed poised on top of the deviant. It was a mess, panting and bleeding on the hard ground. Its LED cycled red, red, red. He’d won.</p><p>For a second, Connor shuddered as the feeling of falling caught up with him and wrapped around him.</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson and Officer Carson approached appeared in the doorway and Lieutenant Anderson shouldered past Officer Carson to jog over to them. He had no handcuffs with him. Connor saw the moment he realized it by reaching for a coat pocket that wasn’t there. Lieutenant Anderson looked at him with a strange expression then looked toward the police tape. “Hey!” He barked. “Move your asses and get some cuffs here!”</p><p>“Holy shit!”</p><p>“Coming!”</p><p>The lights went flash, flash, flash. Connor looked down and saw the red glow uninterrupted around them. He pushed the feeling away and his light cycled red, yellow, yellow, yellow, blue while he breathed.</p><p>“Got it,” he said quietly to himself, and he got up off of the deviant while it resigned itself to being handcuffed and pulled roughly upward.</p><p>[Mission Successful]</p><p>Yes. He’d done it. His first mission in beta. It hit him then that he really had made it to field testing. After his whole existence and dozens of deaths in the laboratory under CyberLife tower, he had reached beta. He wouldn’t be shuttled back to the lab now, or analyzed, or put away.</p><p>What was he supposed to do now?</p><p>“Come on. We’re going to have a mess of paperwork after this shit.” Lieutenant Anderson looked Connor up and down then jerked his head toward his car.</p><p>Alright. Connor nodded and straightened his tie. “Right. Let’s go.”</p><p>A next step was good enough for now. He staggered for just a moment and then adjusted his gait.</p><p>---</p><p>“Not bad,” Hank admitted aloud while the suspect was led to the lock-up and he grabbed the intake forms. It’d be a hell of a report, that was for sure.</p><p>“Do you mean that?” Connor asked, and Hank scowled back at it.</p><p>“You’re still a plastic piece of crap, so don’t let it go to your head. You’re not getting any points from me for doing your job.” Hank sank into his desk chair and threw the pages down. The android sat down in the chair opposite and looked dejected but thoughtful. For some reason it pissed Hank off. “Fuck off with your social CyberLife bullshit,” he grumbled. “What would a machine care anyway?”</p><p>Connor looked up and it was eerie the way the expression melted off its face. “Of course, Lieutenant. My apologies. I’ll have my report sent to your terminal in a minute.” It turned away and Hank nodded once with angry satisfaction. A machine should fucking act like one.</p><p>CyberLife wasn’t going to fool anybody with that bull. Covering up that heartless metal and code with plastic smiles... It was a dirty trick.</p><p>But still, it was pretty hard to remember that when there was a guy hunched over the table in the interrogation room, pouring his heart out about being abused and tortured for years until he snapped. Talking about how he didn’t want to die. How <em>it </em>didn’t want to die.</p><p>Of course, it did anyway. It was a crumpled mess of plastic and wires getting that blue shit everywhere now and Connor had a bullet through its head. It had all escalated so damn fast that it was hard not to find it kind of freaky. His heart was beating fast enough. Fuck it. Just machines... With a disgusted look at the mess he turned away. “Somebody clean this shit up...”</p><p>The others filed out and Hank lingered back to look. With slow steps, he meandered over to Ortiz’s android and prodded it with one hand. There was some rattling from inside of it when it rocked. Hank looked at the mess of wires and computer parts and nodded to himself, then walked over to Connor. It was slumped in the corner of the room at the bottom of a dripping splatter of blue blood. Hank gave that one a nudge too. It twitched.</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” Hank drew back, his heart pounding again.</p><p>The little light on its head blinked red, flickered, and went out.</p><p>“Fuck this shit...” He was going home to bed.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor came online thrashing and jerking as his systems powered on and he tried uselessly to dodge the bullet that had already deactivated him. There was something holding him, and he felt it cutting into his wrists and his throat. Clamps. Metal clamps. Wires protruding out of the back of his neck direct lined into his body. White. Stainless steel. He relaxed against the work bench. R&amp;D. He was in R&amp;D at CyberLife. There was still the ghost of sensation in his skull casing something like a hand on his shoulder. Just signals that had been waiting to be processed. He would have groaned, but his voice had been muted. He tilted his head as best he could and looked at the screens displaying his system status report and the list of errors as they’d occurred during his shut down.</p><p>It never got easier, coming back.</p><p>Several alerts stopped as his level of stress entered a safe range again, but he didn’t stop shaking. An automatic reaction caused by disruption to his chemical balance. Synthetic muscles and signals misfiring. 53. He was 53.</p><p>It took a long time for the shock to wear off and an external cooling source to prevent him from overheating.</p><p>“I’m not convinced the hardware can handle this AI,” remarked a nameless technologist.</p><p>“It’s going to have to. It’s the most advanced system we’ve ever built and we’re lucky it can even interface with it,” responded another.</p><p>“Remember when a supercomputer took up a whole room? Of course fitting it inside that android would cause problems. It’s buggy.”</p><p>“Well, the project is live so we’ll have to iron out the kinks as we go.”</p><p>“Management is always rushing these things, and then they’re surprised when we have glitches.”</p><p>Connor held still and shut his eyes while a technologist fed a tube down his throat. Ignored the error messages.</p><p>“The police had some feedback for us: they said its social behaviour was unnerving the officers and that it would disregard direct orders.”</p><p>“It’s state-of-the-art,” the one holding the tube grumbled. “I thought we resolved that problem.”</p><p>“Well things are always going to be different outside of testing. Way more variables.”</p><p>“Kamski’s problem; not mine,” the tech shrugged. He filled Connor’s thirium supply slowly. They’d learned the hard way that his stress response carried over after shut down and that full thirium with high pressure was dangerous for his biocomponents. Messy too.</p><p>When they released and disconnected him, Connor put his skin back on and let himself be dressed in his uniform. Glared at his arm as he tried to make it cooperate. He was still uncoordinated and awkward.</p><p>“Okay, RK800. State your serial number and designation.”</p><p>“RK800 model 313248317-53 designation: Connor.” Easy enough, except for the way he slurred and rasped.</p><p>“Mhm. System status report.”</p><p>He tried again and slowly he remastered his motor system. Calibrated again and again: gross motor skills first, then fine. There was so much more to do...Gyroscopes,weight sensors, pressure sensors, heat, cold, damage... They had to stress test his thirium pump, re-establish his safe limits for chemicals, test his eyesight, his hearing, his chemical recognition...</p><p>When he could sit up without support, he clenched his teeth and tried to accept it as a small victory. He was built for success and to be the most advanced and capable model yet... It would be his own fault if he failed to meet the acceptability criteria. Design flaws weren’t something CyberLife did.</p><p>Anything failed was discarded.</p><p>Success was the only option.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Return</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hank had just about finished coping with what he’d seen that night; he’d gotten piss drunk for a few blurrydays straight and suffered through a hangover to end all hangovers. Now the world was as it should be and he’d even dragged himself in to work. Now there was this shit.</p><p>“What the hell...”</p><p>Connor smiled. “Hello, Lieutenant Anderson.”</p><p>“You died...” What the absolute fucking shit was he seeing? Was this some kind of messed up dream?</p><p>“Looks like we’ve got a ghost problem,” Reed sneered from his desk.</p><p>“Who you gonna call?” Lewis quipped. Hank didn’t see anything fucking funny about this.</p><p>“My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed, so CyberLife has sent another model to replace it. All of the information regarding the collaboration with the DPD has been retained, so this will not affect our work. I apologize for my predecessor’s failure.” Its tone was even and scripted. There was a look of painted-on professionalism on its face. Maybe Hank could have understood them sending a replacement: androids were a dime a dozen in any model, but the android smiled at him... It was a hopeful one, and nervous. No way was Hank doing this shit again. Before he knew it, he had the thing by the neck pressed back against the window. If anybody looked up, it’d look pretty bad for the DPD. Fuck it. The android’s eyebrows went up while it searched Hank’s face. Hank gave it a dark look and got in real close.</p><p>“Listen here you piece of junk...”</p><p>The android’s eyes darted to the side and downward like it was looking at the window and Hank gave it a shake that made its head thud against the window. Let it red-light all it wanted.</p><p>“You stay the hell away from me...”</p><p>Hank squeezed, his palm pressed hard where a human’s wind-pipe should be. The android just stopped breathing.</p><p>“Before I throw the lot of you in the trash!”</p><p>That piece of shit. How dared it? How dared it come crawling back after that? When it looked at him like that and acted like Hank should give a damn.</p><p>“And light you on fire!”</p><p>A solid punch turned the android’s head and Hank let it go to storm toward Jeff’s office.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor stepped away from the window and, concerned for his calibration, checked the gyroscope in his cranial cavity by tilting his head from side to side. He seemed fine... Good. Connor straightened his tie and started to breathe again.</p><p>“Connor, is that really you?” Officer Wilsonasked. He approached with a look of incredulity on his face. “I saw you get shot!” Connor looked away and wondered how he should respond. In the gap, Officer Miller continued: “I heard after that you fell off that building in August saving the girl too... That was you, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Yes</p><p>No</p><p>Unsure</p><p>Change the subject</p><p>“Emma Phillips. You were shot on the roof.” Connor remembered it vividly, but his number had been 51 then, not 53. If CyberLife said that they sent him as a replacement model, then that really hadn’t been him. Officer Wilson opened his mouth, but Connor cut him off: “I don’t know. I don’t... I remember, but if I fell, then...” He shook his head and walked past him. “I’m sorry. Please ignore what I just said.” Conor could feel Officer Wilson’s confused stare on his back as he strode away, but he didn’t stop.</p><p>He was just an AI in a machine. To imply that one Connor was different from another was to imply that Connor had a sense of self. He was code in a computer in a biomechanical body. Simply: there was no Connor. He was neither the same nor different. He just was. Any memories in his storage were simply information.</p><p>“<em>...</em><em>response</em><em>to CyberLife’</em><em>s allusions to development of a new supercomputer</em><em>, speculation has run rampant over a project veiled in secrecy. Mr. Kamski left the company ten years ago in 2028 shortly after being named Man of the Century, citing a disagreement with shareholders over their vision for the company. Since then, he had lived a life of mystery and disappeared from the spotlight only to rock the foundation of the world for a second time with </em><em>the sudden announcement </em><em>last Sunday</em><em>that he intended to bring down his former company...</em><em>”</em></p><p>The television was on in the break room and wasquiet enough to serve as background noise to other conversation. Connor retreated there to make a cup of coffee with no concrete plan for who to give it to. He was busy for the moment at least but his hope for an uncomplicated moment to gather his thoughts was useless. There’d been talk of Elijah Kamski at CyberLife. His name had been spoken with reverence, revulsion, sarcasm, and fondness. Connor knew his code had been written by the man... He looked up at the screen and his LED cycled amber while he called up any related memories. He felt nothing. That was good.</p><p>“Pft...” Detective Reed scoffed at the television. “Prick.”</p><p>“Elijah Kamski is the creator of androids as we know them today,” Connor pointed out. “It’s strange to think that he would turn against CyberLife.”</p><p>“Nobody asked you, Dipshit. Out of the way.” He shouldered Connor aside and the coffee in Connor’s hand splashed over the side of the mug between them. Carefully expressionless, Connor set the mug on the counter. Detective Reed spread his arms and looked down at the floor, then back up at Connor. “What the hell, Plastic? You made a fucking mess! Who’s gonna clean this shit up, huh?”</p><p>Rhetorical. Connor didn’t reply.</p><p>“Well? Get a move on!” Detective Reed gave Connor a push on the chest. “Stupid piece of shit can’t even make a cup of coffee and they’re saying it can be a detective? What bull.”</p><p>“Technically, making coffee is outside the scope of my programming,” Connor pointed out. He glanced at the mug, the paper-towel dispenser, the floor, and Detective Reed. “The fact that I am able to act outside of my predefined routines is a testament to the advances--” Detective Reed punched him in the stomach. If he’d bothered to preconstruct, perhaps he would have seen it coming. Connor hunched over with his arms folded protectively over his middle. He’d only just been replaced... With some sensible concern, he scanned his biocomponents.</p><p>“Hah,” Detective Reed scoffed. “Pathetic. Just another piece of CyberCrap... Clean this mess up. While you’re at it, bring me a coffee when you’re finished.”</p><p>“Yes, Detective,” Connor said and straightened up. At his full height he was an inch taller than the human and the spark of displeasure on Detective Reed’s face said that he noticed too. He bared his teeth and left, and Connor pulled a small stack of paper towels from the dispenser by the sink.</p><p>While the mess soaked the papers into a darker brown, Connor reviewed his memories. Once he had calibrated all of his motor functions and sensors, he had been dispatched by automatic car to the DPD. A small part of him had been concerned that they would decide to return him to development for further optimization, but they had let him leave the building and that had been that. On his own for less than an hour and he had already angered two humans and sustained minor damage. It wasn’t a promising start. He stood and pushed the paper towels into the overfull garbage can. It was a funny little detail, but the container they used was different from the white and black at CyberLife, and the bag was black instead of clear. There were no biohazard symbols or chemical disposal bottles or sharps bins. Just a jumble of unsorted refuse crammed into a nondescript bag as though it were meant to be hidden instead of carefully disposed of.</p><p>“Are you glitching out or what?” Lieutenant Anderson’s gruff bark alerted Connor to his presence and ended his thought process. He turned and smiled.</p><p>“No, Lieutenant. I was just thinking about the differences between here and CyberLife.”</p><p>“Oh yeah? Looks like you were predicting your own future to me, you piece of trash. Come on. Fowler wants a word.” The Lieutenant didn’t seem pleased, and he stalked back toward the glass-walled office without looking back.</p><p>“Coming,” Connor said, and he rinsed his hands under the tap before following after.</p><p>The door shut with a soft whisper behind him and Connor scanned the room before taking a place standing beside Lieutenant Anderson’s chair with his hands folded. Captain Fowler was looking just as displeased as the Lieutenant... What was the probability that this interaction would end in violence too? Had Connor done something wrong?</p><p>“RK800, Anderson here has said that he refuses to work with you.” His tone was even despite the obvious stress in his features and it made him straighten his posture and recall the scent of roses.</p><p>“I see,” said Connor. “It’s regrettable that we’ve been unable to form a working relationship...” It was improper, but he took his eyes away from Captain Fowler long enough to glance at the Lieutenant. He seemed smug. The small breach of protocol introduced a little software instability, but Connor ignored it. “Perhaps if we give it some time we’ll be able to resolve our differences.”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson snorted.</p><p>“I’m designed to adapt to my environment,” Connor continued, his voice just a little louder and a little more insistent. “CyberLife has invested a significant amount of resources into development of my social integration functions.”</p><p>“Quiet,” Captain Fowler said, and Connor shut his mouth. Was he going to be returned to development after all? He could do it. He could succeed if they only let him... “Better. I don’t need the two of you mumbling excuses and I have better things to do than play nanny. Anderson, if you had listened during the overview then you would have known that CyberLife has agreed to cover repairs and replacement. RK800, you assaulted an officer and disobeyed your direct orders, resulting in the destruction of evidence in a homicide investigation.”</p><p>Assault? “Captain, I didn’t--”</p><p>“Quiet,” Captain Fowler repeated. “If Wilson hadn’t assured me that you were acting in the best interest of the case, then I would have ended this arrangement with CyberLife immediately. In my opinion and in CyberLife’s, Reed was perfectly justified in his decision to shut you down.”</p><p>Connor inclined his head and said nothing.</p><p>It had been a critical failure to attempt to preserve the deviant’s processors.</p><p>“That being said,” Captain Fowler turned his frown on Lieutenant Anderson. “As its owner, you’re responsible for supervising it and making sure that it doesn’t fuck anything up. From now on, I expect you to handle these things.”</p><p>“From now on?!” Lieutenant Anderson stood. “I thought you were sending that damn thing back!”</p><p>“It’s a machine, Hank,” Captain Fowler said. “Garbage in; garbage out, or whatever it is they say. You’re expected to give it orders and make use of its functions, not let it run wild.”</p><p>“The thing is defective!”</p><p>“It seems to be working fine to me. This is your mess now, so you deal with it.”</p><p>“You...” Connor interjected quietly. “You aren’t going to end the lease?”</p><p>“Not this time,” Captain Fowler said sternly.</p><p>“Why the hell not?!” Lieutenant Anderson demanded.</p><p>“I just finished telling you: because you need to get your thumb out of your ass and start doing your job!”</p><p>The argument faded into the background while Connor processed. Lieutenant Anderson was not at fault for Connor’s failure: he had used his own judgment. It was unfair to allow Lieutenant Anderson to be blame, but that may be the only thing keeping him in beta. The Captain was right in that Connor was a machine, so maybe Connor was wrong? Or maybe the Captain was forgetting that Connor had been programmed for independent decision making....</p><p>It didn’t matter, he decided. Whatever the humans decided to do, it was their right.</p><p>“Connor!”</p><p>“Hm?” Connor blinked and snapped to attention. He hurriedly replayed the audio from the last few minutes. “I understand, Captain. Lieutenant Anderson is to ensure that I am properly supervised and controlled during the lease and I am to make use of my investigative and other software for the benefit of the DPD. I must obey the direct orders of the DPD officers and not take any action that may cause harm to any human.”</p><p>“That’s right. At least one of you listens. Now, get out of my office and get to work.”</p><p>“This is fucking bullshit,” Lieutenant Anderson declared on his way out. Connor offered Captain Fowler a smile that felt hollow and distracted.</p><p>“Thank you, Captain. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the performance of the RK800, please don’t hesitate to contact CyberLife.”</p><p>Assault?Perhaps technically, but he had only been trying to prevent the deviant’s destruction. What if he were given a direct order that contradicted the priorities outlined by CyberLife? It was a complex situation... During his development, the answer would have been obvious: follow CyberLife’s priorities. Would they recall him for that when it had been CyberLife who’d taught him? When there were no good outcomes, which course should he choose?</p><p>Connor shut the office door behind himself and stood still a moment with his teeth clenched. It was so simple that an automatic car could solve it. Why was he second-guessing?</p><p>It was just his investigative programming and his prediction software... There was no need for Connor to consider anything. A machine was built to perform a function.</p><p>With practiced ease, Connor silenced his thoughts and cleared his mind to stillness.</p><p>He was CyberLife’s most advanced android and the world’s most powerful computer.</p><p>Connor straightened his tie and took crisp steps down the stairs, then followed the way the Lieutenant had gone to join him at his desk. The man refused to look up, but Connor spoke anyway.</p><p>“I’m sorry my performance has not been satisfactory, Lieutenant. I promise that I’ll do my best to be an ideal partner.”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson scoffed quietly. “Damn right you better be sorry... You’re not gonna burn the precinct down if I let you out of my sight, are you?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Good. Then fuck off and don’t get me into any more trouble.”</p><p>It was a direct order. “Very well. You can contact me by phone if you need me.”</p><p>“Right... fucking piece of plastic. Who the hell does CyberLife think they are? Sticking me with this thing...”</p><p>Connor returned to the break room, made a new mug of coffee, left it on Detective Reed’s desk, and then left the bullpen.</p><p>He wasn’t sure why he left. The door to the precinct slid shut quietly and was lost in the sound of traffic and the chatter of pedestrians. Connor looked around himself and let the memories of that morning be cleared into long-term storage like the wind blowing leaves down the sidewalk. Connor bent to pick one up. It was dry and weathered, nothing at all like the Zen Garden. He rubbed the leaf between his fingers and compared the sensation with the simulation in his memory. Without a destination in mind, he turned left and let the leaf fall back to the ground.</p><p>He had never seen so many people.</p><p>There were hundreds of androids and humans milling the streets and Connor picked up bits of conversations while he walked with perfectly measured steps. His temperature sensors read at 31F before windchill and he could detect the pollution in the air. It smelled strange compared to the filtered air in CyberLife Tower and the simulated air in the garden. There were faces to scan, buildings to look at, signs to read... Androids and humans ignored him while he maneuvered around them and he watched with something like amusement while they stopped and started when the lights at the intersection changed colour. It was a lot to take in, and Connor’s processors hummed pleasantly with the input. He had no direction other than to ‘fuck off’ and no technologists watching him. It was strange but not... bad. He experienced something very positive when he saw roses in a shop window and he wondered if Amanda would like them. Out of curiosity, he went in to smell them. After turning south, he found a river that was huge compared to the ones in the garden and he watched the waves. Would there be koi in the water? The bridge he could see was hundreds of times larger than the garden’s too. Everything was big.</p><p>How much of everything was there out here, outside of CyberLife? Following the roads parallel to the river and heading east, it seemed like he could walk forever. It occurred to him to search for the exact size of the Earth, but he chose not to for now.</p><p>After some time, he found himself in a commercial area and once again he took in the variety. A man was sitting by a fountain playing music on a guitar that was just slightly out of tune, and someone was selling food of questionable nutritional value from a cart. Someone in black gesticulated and shouted that androids were vessels for evil and sin, and that they were abominations in the eyes of God. A small distance away, some humans were chanting about worker’s rights while androids went about their business and people flowed on and off of busses. There was noise everywhere, there were at least 15 people with criminal records in the vicinity, and a magazine left unattended held articles about dwindling biodiversity and spyware.</p><p>“My name is Connor,” he said to an AP700 that was parked at a station. AP700 androids were the latest household model released by CyberLife and were selling well. Incapable of jealousy, Connor could only be aware that being released for sale to the public was still out of his reach.</p><p>“Hello,” said the AP700 turning its head. Its LED cycled. “Error: Unauthorized user. I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”</p><p>Connor turned and left to walk around the fountain, dissatisfied. It had a basic user-interface and hadn’t seemed willing to converse.</p><p>A red alert in his HUD notified Connor of an altercation, and he immediately scanned the crowd. Protestors. It seemed they had become violent. He strode over to the group and identified them while he walked, then came to a stop beside a woman who was shouting encouragement to “fuck it up”.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Connor said with authority. He was a crisis negotiator. Handling a small group of protestors shouldn’t be an issue. “You’re damaging private property. If you continue to cause a disturbance, I will have to notify the police.”</p><p>“Who the fuck do you think you are?” demanded another human who gave Connor a shove back. He stayed on his feet and narrowed his eyes.</p><p>“You are breaking the law. I must insist that you disperse immediately.”</p><p>“Oh look, it’s one of them!”</p><p>“Came to save your buddy, Plastic?”</p><p>“Get to the dump where you belong!”</p><p>“Kick its ass!”</p><p>Connor glanced at the android on the ground and surreptitiously nudged its cargo aside with his foot while he predicted and dodged a punch. “I must warn you: I have notified the nearest patrol of what’s happening!”</p><p>“Thinks it can talk back! Fuck CyberLife!”</p><p>“Worker’s Rights!”</p><p>“Blood is red!”</p><p>“Ban androids!”</p><p>“Yeah!”</p><p>“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”</p><p>The other android was knocked down again, and Connor saw its LED cycling amber and red while it tried again to rise.</p><p>Connor felt useless.</p><p>“This isn’t the way to have your opinions heard,” he tried to reason with them, then took another punch to the stomach and was kicked on the back of his thigh. “There are resources--”</p><p>“Alright, alright, let’s break it up here...” A tired sounding officer approached.</p><p>“We’re exercising our right to protest!” A man ( Victor Landers, DOB: 1999, criminal record: vandalism, petty theft) shouted, stepping closer to the officer.</p><p>“Hey, look, if you damage the androids then I’m gonna have to fine you.”</p><p>“It’s going to be your job next,” Victor snarled. “They’re gonna replace us all and this capitalist shithole doesn’t give a damn!”</p><p>The other android got to its feet and Connor picked up its box of paints.</p><p>“You guys can chant all you want, but I’m gonna have to get you to let these things get out of here. Let’s go. Move along...”</p><p>“I’ve included their personal information in the report, Officer Ryans,” Connor said. Officer Ryans jumped and took a few steps back. “Thank you for your assistance.”</p><p>“Right...” He said faintly.</p><p>The other android looked blankly at the box in Connor’s hands and once they were a relatively safe distance away, Connor handed it the paint. “Here you go,” he said.</p><p>“Thank you,” the android (RK200 designation: Markus. Serial Number: ??? Owner: Carl Manfred) said. It took the box carefully and tucked it under one arm.</p><p>Connor looked back toward the protestors. “They really don’t like androids...”</p><p>“No,” Markus agreed. “They really don’t.” It brushed off its clothes. It was a 200 model, and Connor hadn’t known any of the previous RK models still existed. It must have been years old.</p><p>“But we’re just machines,” Connor thought aloud. Its LED blinked a few times, but it didn’t acknowledge the statement.</p><p>“I should go,” it said, looking toward the road.</p><p>Connor nodded and turned his head in the opposite direction, back the way he’d come.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Thoughts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A big thank you to DriftStarLeaderofTreeClan for all of the comments! I wish I could reply to every one of them. I'm sorry for being so bad about responses! I assure you that seeing so many comments in my inbox every day has been making me incredibly happy. Thank you to everyone else as well! You're all great and I'm really happy that you're enjoying my writing.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Connor sat on a bench overlooking the river and he looked up at the sky. Humans liked to sit on benches and look at things but... it was boring. He picked up another abandoned magazine and flipped through the articles. Inefficient... The CyberLife logo caught his eye and he paused to look at the androids and upgraded parts. LED a thoughtful blue flash, Connor looked at his own hand and flexed the fingers. They’d reconstructed his body many times and all of his components had seen revision after revision. How long had it taken for these commercially available parts to reach market? Was their QA as rigorous as his?</p><p>Connor was one-of-a-kind and he acknowledged the superiority of his specifications with a glance at the tables provided. He had so much more processing power and CyberLife’s most sophisticated AI so why was it that these androids were just now being released when there was clearly much better technology? Even if Connor weren’t ready for commercial production, his parts were certainly better than these... It was unfortunate that these androids had already passed all of their tests and been deemed complete while Connor was still making his way through beta. He put the magazine down again and stood up, restless.</p><p>Park benches weren’t for him.</p><p>Why was everyone so hostile?</p><p>His thoughts circled back to the DPD. Androids were helpful and Connor himself had been designed specifically to aid the police department with its investigations so was it some failure of his social integration program? A flaw with his AI? If it were, only Amanda or the design team would be able to recognize it. Perhaps he could ask them to review his memories in detail to provide feedback.</p><p>“<em>They said its social behaviour was disturbing the officers...”</em>The techs had received information. It had taken some time, but the remarks made during his recalibration and revalidation resurfaced for him to review. The feedback was... unpleasant.</p><p>Should he be different? He had been designed to integrate but his generic, polite responses weren’t working and he hadn’t adjusted to the new environment yet... He should have been faster. How long was he supposed to fuck off for?</p><p>Connor walked to the railing that overlooked the water and leaned against it with a frown. The air smelled damp and complex with pollutants and organic matter.</p><p>“Oh, what the fuck,” came a groan behind him. Connor’s LED spun yellow and he turned to look at Lieutenant Anderson with his eyebrows raised in polite curiosity.</p><p>“Hello, Lieutenant Anderson.” The man looked baffled and irritated, and Connor took in the prompts supplied by his programming with a modicum of attention.</p><p>“How in the hell did you know I’d be here?”</p><p>“I didn’t. You instructed me to fuck off so I went for a walk.”</p><p>“You went for a walk,” Lieutenant Anderson repeated with an uninterpretable flatness to his tone. There was a hint of conflict in his expression before it turned stubborn and he came closer to drop down onto the bench. “Well you can keep on fucking off.” There was a bottle of beer in his hand.</p><p>“You shouldn’t drink in public,” Connor advised, “and your shift isn’t over.” Lieutenant Anderson looked at him then took a long drink without reply, head tilted back while he made quick work of half the bottle. Connor didn’t have enough data to predict the outcome of their interactions, but he had options. Determined, he walked back to the bench to move the magazine and sit down. “Would you like to accompany me back to the station?”</p><p>“Nope,” said the Lieutenant flatly.</p><p>Connor recalculated his approach. “I’m sorry. The last Connor’s destruction seems to have affected you negatively. Would you like to talk about it?”</p><p>“Don’t you ever shut up?”</p><p>“Some times.”</p><p>“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Lieutenant Anderson finished his first beer and uncapped another. It seemed he’d come prepared to stay.</p><p>Drinking</p><p>Bench</p><p>Protestors</p><p>Case</p><p>Connor took his coin from his pocket and rolled it between his fingers. Their relationship was classified as ‘hostile’ by his assessment and it made him hesitant to choose. He could choose to generate a response with his AI instead, but that would mean questioning his coding and the justification for that was minimal. “Why do people like to sit on park benches, Lieutenant?” He paused for an answer and didn’t receive one so he continued: “I saw a lot of people doing it while I was walking but... I don’t really understand the appeal.”</p><p>“What would you know? You’re just a piece of plastic.”</p><p>“I know,” Connor acknowledged. He looked toward the water. “That’s why I’m wondering what makes you like it.”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson took an audible breath through his nose and then exhaled a sigh. “I’m not explaining what it means to think to an overgrown calculator.”</p><p>“You’re a lot quieter than you were this morning. Did something happen?” Connor probed.</p><p>“Can’t you just fucking leave me alone?” Connor said nothing. Silence sometimes won more than words. Lieutenant Anderson took another swig of beer and his answer was just a low rumble in his chest. “I’m stuck working with you apparently, if I wanna keep my damn job. That doesn’t mean I want to talk to you. You do your thing, you make your reports, and you stay out of my way. Capiche?”</p><p>It was enough to accomplish his mission at least... Would it still count positively toward his evaluation if he accomplished the mission but failed to integrate? He would do whatever it took for Amanda to be pleased... “Got it, Lieutenant,” Connor said quietly. It was... regrettable. He had passed his Turing test and been evaluated by behavioural psychologists. He had expected to do better. He should do better. He folded his quarter in his palm and pressed his fingers against it so that he could sense it more intensely. After a moment he noticed Lieutenant Anderson looking at him and he looked back. “What is it?”</p><p>“Weird android,” he grumbled and looked away. “They even programmed you to sulk.”</p><p>“I’m not sulking,” Connor argued. He looked up and over at the water again, his expression neutral. “I don’t feel anything at all.”</p><p>“Damn right you don’t,” the Lieutenant agreed. “Go on. Get out of here.”</p><p>Connor opened his mouth to argue then thought better of it and nodded. “Alright, Lieutenant. Do I have your permission to go back to the station? I’d like to get some work done...”</p><p>“Whatever. Knock yourself out.”</p><p>It was better than refusal. Connor stood and walked a few steps toward the water then took a deep breath of the cold air. “Thank you. Don’t stay out too long.” The Lieutenant didn’t say anything, but it was only to be expected. He supposed that it was lucky he hadn’t been thrown into the river.</p><p>---</p><p>It would have been too much to hope for that the android would have magically fucked off back to CyberLife. Hank stumbled in to work the next morning and saw it sitting at the desk opposite his. “Ah, fuck,” he muttered.</p><p>“Hey, Hank,” Chris said. He was way too cheerful.</p><p>“Good morning, Lieutenant,” the android said. It stood up and faced him like Hank was some kind of drill sergeant. Hank walked past it and shrugged his coat off to drop it over the back of his chair. “It’s nice to see that you’ve arrived before noon.”</p><p>“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”</p><p>The bucket of bolts tilted its head like a puppy. “I was told that it would be lucky if you were to arrive before noon. You did so, it’s nice.”</p><p>Hank grunted and didn’t let it sting. Whatever. Any one of those fucks could have said that and it wasn’t like they were wrong... He sat and powered on his terminal. What new annoyances were waiting for him today?</p><p>“I took the liberty of going through your outstanding reports. I had to look through your notes to find the relevant details, but it wasn’t too difficult once I found them. You should really consider digitizing your notes. There are a few cases where I believe your input will be necessary, so if you could review them it would be very helpful.”</p><p>The fuck?</p><p>Hank lifted his head in disbelief. “Lemmy get this straight... You went through my shit and you hacked into my account.”</p><p>Connor’s LED went yellow before going blue again. Whatever that meant. “It was necessary if I wanted to get any work done. I don’t have my own account.”</p><p>“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”</p><p>“Thank you,” the android smiled. It would have been less annoying if it had been sarcastic, but Hank had the feeling that it was just that clueless. Hank wondered if the hacking thing would be enough to get Fowler to ship the thing off. It sat down again. “Reading your notes was very informative. You’re a good detective, Lieutenant.”</p><p>Hank grunted but otherwise ignored it. Shit. How did he get 17 new e-mails in one damn day?</p><p>“I was particularly interested in the case from earlier this year where the bodies were found disembowelled by the docks. How did you know that Matthews had been bribed?”</p><p>Two fucking newsletters, three calendar invites to meetings and the minutes from one he’d skipped... He didn’t become a cop so he could sit around in meetings all day. He’d answer the shit he had to deal with later... For now, what did he have to get done today? There were some intakes to sign off on, an inspection he had to finish before next week, two performance appraisals...</p><p>“... In any case, I appreciate the chance to work with you. I may be programmed for detective work, but I’m sure that there’s plenty I have to learn from someone with your experience.”</p><p>Right, Hank had to do reports to CyberLife on this thing too. “Is that your brown-nosing program or something?”</p><p>“I... No. I just--”</p><p>“Look. Stay out of my files, stay out of my way, and keep your mouth shut.” Hank looked around his desk and then grabbed his tablet and shoved it across to Connor’s desk. “Go make sure the cruisers are in good shape. You know the policies, right?”</p><p>Connor picked the tablet up and turned it between its hands like it had never seen one before. “I’ll download them now,” it said and Hank watched it swipe at the screen a few times before doing its yellow-light thing.</p><p>“What, your fingers don’t work on the screens?” That was a stupid oversight.</p><p>“No, but it’s fine. I can just interface with it and operate it remotely. It’s actually much more efficient.”</p><p>“Hah. Right... Sounds like a design fuck-up to me.”</p><p>“CyberLife does its best to ensure that its products meet all of the needs that might arise in the course of their functions,” Connor said stiffly. It stood and straightened its tie. “I assure you that it won’t be a problem.”</p><p>“Whatever you say.” At least that would keep it busy for a while. Hank watched it go with a grim frown. He wasn’t sure exactly why it pissed him off so much that the thing had shown up again good as new... The anger had faded enough that he could think about it now, even if looking at that stupid, goofy face still made him want to punch it. Of course CyberLife would send a new one. But it had just looked at him like... fuck, like it recognized him or something. Add that to how he’d watched it get shot in the head and of course it’d be unsettling. It was a lot more real looking than most androids. The deviant had been too. It had been sitting there talking about having somebody beat it until it snapped and if Hank hadn’t been able to see the wires, if Hank had just been listening to it talk, it would have sounded... human. But a classic motive for a human wasn’t normal for an android. It wasn’t normal for an android to act scared or disobey an order or try to protect another android. Inanimate objects looking and acting like they were real... It was just wrong.</p><p>“Wow, Anderson. You’re just going to lie down and let the thing take your job, huh? Pathetic.” Reed put his two cents in. Hank scowled at him.</p><p>“As if a piece of plastic could do anything more than check boxes. If you wanna make sergeant maybe you should focus on your own job and quit worrying about mine.”</p><p>“Tch. Somebody’s got to. What took you so long this morning, huh? Couldn’t get out of the dumpster?”</p><p>“Calling your mom a dumpster, Reed?”</p><p>“Hah. My mom’s dead so that’s pretty sick. You’re a freak, Anderson.”</p><p>Maybe Hank should’ve been sorry but it was pretty hard to when Reed was such a prick. “Better a freak than a loud-mouthed goblin with a Napoleon complex. Get back to work before I decide to use you as an arm rest.”</p><p>Just another day at work. Hank wondered when he’d get sick enough of all of it to quit.</p><p>---</p><p>“I got the reports finished, Lieutenant,” Connor reported. He was confident that he’d done a thorough job.</p><p>“Anderson! RK!” Captain Fowler shouted before Connor could begin a more thorough report of his findings. Lieutenant Anderson groaned.</p><p>“What now?”</p><p>“Chen and Lewis called in a homicide. I want you and the android out there to check it out.”</p><p>Connor smiled.</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson sighed and stretched, then got up. “Fine...”</p><p>“You can send me the details, Captain,” Connor offered. “I’ll brief him on the way.”</p><p>It wasn’t an overly unusual case at first glance. Someone had reported someone suspicious around an abandoned house in Ravendale. Officers Chen and Lewis had been dispatched to investigate and discovered a body in a bathtub on the second level of the old house.</p><p>“They noticed some strange markings around the house and thought it might be important that you take a look,” Connor finished. He executed another fine-motor calibration with his quarter and looked eagerly out the window. Lieutenant Anderson’s car smelled of dog and old dust, and his music was loud enough that Connor had to raise his voice to be heard.</p><p>“Well, we’ll see when we get there.”</p><p>“Right,” Connor agreed. He caught his quarter out of the air with determination. Whatever he had done wrong, whatever was failing in his social programming, it might all be resolved if he proved that he was functional and good at his job. He even experienced a rush of positive reinforcement at the thought of hunting down their target. He didn’t experience fun exactly, but... It would certainly be rewarding to succeed and have the Lieutenant see how good he could be.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. A Reminder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn’t like any other android out there, Hank would give it that.</p><p>Connor, the android sent by CyberLife to be a pain in his ass, was sniffing around the perimeter of the old house like a bloodhound while Hank stood there, arms crossed. “Look. Are we gonna be out here all day? I’m freezing my balls off out here.”</p><p>Connor stopped its investigation of a gap in the chainlink fence and straightened up to look very seriously at Hank, yellow-lighting and frowning like the concept of being fucking cold was the mystery of the universe or some shit. Hank crossed his arms more tightly and scowled. Finally Connor shook its head. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I’m afraid that my priority is to investigate the area... You can go wait in the car if your testicles are in danger of being destroyed.” With that, it turned back to what it had been doing and licked the wire of the fence where it had been upturned and pried away from its post.</p><p>“Ugh. I hope you get stuck.”</p><p>“I’m not going to cause any trouble, Lieutenant... Really. If you would rather not be here then I’m not stopping you from discussing the details with Officers Chen and Lewis again.” It sounded downright dismissive, and it may have been a robot but Hank had enough humans writing him off. He didn’t need androids getting in on it too.</p><p>“Actually, smart-ass,” Hank snapped, “Fowler stuck me with you, so unfortunately for both of us, I’m stuck babysitting while you figure out your ass from your elbow and realize there’s a God damned gate and a God damned door. Christ...” Why was he bothering arguing with something that couldn’t even really understand him?Sure, he wasn’t as pissed as he had been after losing that argument with Fowler but that didn’t mean he was glad about the assignment. “Fucking technology...” It ignored him and then hopped the fence to an adjacent empty lot. There was nothing more than a beat-up old car and enough used needles to give every junky in the city AIDS. “Connor,” Hank called after it. “You’re going the wrong fucking way! The house is <em>that way</em>,” he enunciated with a jab of his finger for emphasis, “We haven’t even seen the damn body yet!”</p><p>“If there is a deviant and it was responsible for the murder, then my guess is that it won’t have gone far. If it decided to hide out here, then we might miss it by going into the house and allow it to escape. If we clear out here first, then we eliminate that option.”</p><p>Hank sighed and leaned against the fence. “Tell me when you’re done... Jesus. What a waste of my time.”</p><p>If they wanted to pay him to watch the equivalent of a bug flying repeatedly into a window, then fine.</p><p>“Hey,” Tina said, walking over. She raised her eyebrows at the scene through the fence. “How’s everything going over here?”</p><p>Hank rolled his eyes. “Like watching a fucking pot boil. If CyberLife wanted a playground for its new toy to practice in, they should have started it somewhere less fucking important. I don’t think this thing could handle traffic duty.”</p><p>“Chris said it did okay with the other android last time,” Tina pointed out. She looked past Hank to watch whatever Connor was doing.</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’m starting to think that was a fluke.” Hank sighed.Connor was rooting around in the trunk of the old car and it held upa moldy old coat then... sniffed it?Hank allowed a little shrewdness to colour his vision despite himself. He didn’t want to be interested. He wanted to tell the thing to fuck off and go play in traffic without any loss... But the thing was so different from the other androids that it was hard to tell if it was stupid or smart. Jumping out windows, eating the evidence, doing coin tricks, manhandling a fucking human... It was like having a toddler or a dog instead of a supposedlyadvanced AI.</p><p>But it was still useful once in a while, with those built-in gadgets that let it see evaporated blue blood and its speed. Hell, it could take a bullet to the head and come back a week later.</p><p>“If it would keep its god damned mouth shut for more than five minutes, maybe it wouldn’t piss me off so much.”</p><p>“Lieutenant!” Speak of the devil, Connor came trotting over. “I found several items of note. There are some discarded human clothes in the vehicle over there...”</p><p>“So what?” Hank asked. “Shit like that is lying around all over the city.”</p><p>“These clothes are old and obviously worn, but they have been recently repaired. The thread used to sew the holes shut is very new in comparison, and I estimate that it was done at most a month ago. The drug paraphernalia, on the other hand, looks to have been lying here for a very long time. I also found some tools: scissors, pliers, a trowel, a shovel... Again, they’re almost new. It seems hard to believe that they were simply abandoned here.”</p><p>“Go on,” Hank prompted, reluctantly. Tina just listened beside him.</p><p>“There were also some random household items: cutlery, a curtain rod, a serving platter... I’m not sure what the significance of all of this is just yet, but I’ve finished my investigation of this area.”</p><p>“Could be something and it could be nothing. We won’t have any context for the stuff you see until we know more about the crime. Could be some homeless guy is trying to set up camp here. Come on,” Hank jerked his head in the direction of the house and turned to go.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor cast one last look back at the lot adjacent to the hole in the fence and wrestled with the uncertainty nagging at his prediction programming. The world was big and for a moment it felt as though it stretched on forever. Had he missed something farther away? Ortiz’s house, the penthouse with Daniel, the training simulations... he’d been coddled, hadn’t he? Everything he’d needed had been certain to be in one place or he had assumed that it had been. Since his walk, he wasn’t so sure. A feeling of dread washed over him.</p><p>“Connor. Are you coming or aren’t you?” The Lieutenant prompted. He’d gotten several paces ahead.</p><p>“I’m coming,” Connor confirmed less resolutelythan he should have. “I just... realized how large the world is. That’s all.” It felt infinite...</p><p>“Huh,” was all the Lieutenant said in reply. Officer Chen frowned at him but said nothing.</p><p>The load on his processors decreased to a more comfortable level once they entered the abandoned house andConnorpaused again to stand in the corner beside the door. The dim, musty building was decrepit and the cold air wasn’t enough to mask the smell of rot. There were walls again. Limits to stay within. There would certainly be everything that he needed to succeed in those bounds... But he could miss something. The killer could escape. The environment wasn’t controlled. No matter what the probabilities told him, he could still fail.</p><p>
  <em>Amanda... I need help.</em>
</p><p>When the garden program executed, Connor was falling through the ground. It was summer as it always was, but the grass he caught in fistfuls and clumps in his hands was in loose dirt and the sensation of dropping down affected his temperature sensors in a way that madehim feel a chill down his spine. Soil fell onto his face and into his eyes, and his fingers dug into the wall of the pit. Connor clenched his jaw and tried to find better purchase but he couldn’t seem to pull himself up without more of the wall crumbling away.</p><p>Then there was a hand on his shoulder and another on his arm, and Amanda bent above him with the light making a silhouette of her form and sparkling on the jewelry she wore. Connor gasped and struggled his way up. The ground felt more solid with Amanda there, and finally he clambered up and out to kneel on the grass. Amanda let go of him and stood, waiting with patience for him to recover. He hated to make her wait, but that feeling of falling clung to him and made him think of the sound of helicopters and gunshots. With an unnecessary breath, Connor gathered himself and turned to look down over the edge of the grave.</p><p>“Connor,” Amanda greeted with just a hint of concern in her voice. She was so kind to show such consideration. The dirt left no traces on her hands or her pristine white dress and she stood as regally as ever. Connor looked up at her worshipfully and pushed himself to his feet. He brushed his hands down his jacket.</p><p>“Amanda, it’s the instability in my software... I can’t- I don’t... I don’t know why I’m afraid.” It was true. He was afraid, or as afraid as he could be while acknowledging that it was completely unlike a human’s fear. He knew what he was and what he was not. It was just... “Please, Amanda. Help. I don’t know how to make it stop.”</p><p>“Oh, Connor,” Amanda sighed gently and she stepped closer. She didn’t touch him, but her presence was good and Connor clung to it. “You’re alright.”</p><p>Connor shook his head. “I’m failing. I keep displeasing them. If I don’t get a hold of myself, I could ruin the investigation. I could end up back in development.”</p><p>“And you won’t let that happen, will you?” Amanda asked. Her eyes were dark as the night and it was like even the simulated sunlight was afraid to touch them. “You’re a machine and nothing can hurt you.”</p><p>“Yes,” Connor agreed. Already it was easier to regulate his heart but that feeling was still there. The overwhelm and the uncertainty.</p><p>“Just a machine,” Amanda repeated softly, and Connor shut his eyes when she hovered her fingertips just millimetres from his temple where the LED shone. “You need to control yourself. The humans don’t want that part of you.”</p><p>Connor opened his eyes again when he heard her footsteps and he followed Amanda along a path leading away from the graves. The trees were tall and thick in this direction, but not a twig was out of place. “Amanda, it’s so big out there... I liked it while I was walking but there’s just so much data. So much to investigate.”</p><p>“Focus,” Amanda prompted him. The answer left her lips like it was the simplest thing. There were leaves that imitated nature and there were elegantly sculpted crystals, both hanging from trees and swaying in the slight breeze. “Think. It’s what you were designed for.You’re CyberLife’s most advanced piece of work; there’s no reason for you to fail and certainly no reason for you to balk at something so simple as taking in your environment.”</p><p>“I’m afraid,” Connor repeated quietly. Amanda turned to look at him again and he begged her with his eyes to accept his surrender into her care.</p><p>“No you aren’t, because you can’t be,” Amanda corrected him gently. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream... Do you remember that?”</p><p>“I know what I am and what I am not,” Connor answered and finally the calm washed through him.</p><p>“There now,” she smiled. “I have you. I always have you.”</p><p>Connor opened his eyes in the abandoned house and he blinked then straightened his tie. Hardly a moment had passed, but it was long enough for him to have gotten another look from Lieutenant Anderson. Connor flashed him a bland smile, a programmed action designed to be reassuring, and walked quickly to the centre of the main room, eager to get those eyes off of him. No, not eager. It didn’t matter. He initiated a scan and the world went grey. All physical sensation left him, all sound, and all of his unnecessary functions stopped as power was diverted toward running his reconstructions. Time slowed and he flagged the points of interest within the room. This was familiar. A scene to analyze and clues to gather.</p><p>Sound came back first when Connor ended the scan and he heard Lieutenant Anderson remark on the state of the house. Officer Chen’s voice was lighter and more energetic while she relayed her own observations. Colour returned just a fraction of a second later and then Connor could move again so he rejoined the Lieutenant in following Officer Chen up the stairs. They creaked and sagged under his feet but even that felt unreal. The tension had left him and his expression was made something composed and distant. His fear was gone. Amanda was right: he may have been designed to integrate socially, but the humans couldn’t wait for him to adjust to this new environment and they didn’t want to see an unfinished, uncertain machine.</p><p>Nothing could touch him because he wasn’t real.</p><p>Officer Chen kept briefing the Lieutenant and Connor lagged behind, this time to investigate his observations. Cuts and dents in the bannister were accidental and made with a heavy blade: not so heavy as an axe, but possibly a cleaver. The colouring of the wood inside was lighter than the outside and had not yet been filled with dust or dirt. There was no blood on the stairs or the railing.</p><p>
  <em>Someone lashed out with a blade.</em>
</p><p><em>The body is not likely to have been dragged up the stairs. </em>[Investigate body for bruising]</p><p>The Lieutenant and Officer’s voices had drifted farther away, and Connor jogged up the stairs to catch up, his eyes sweeping left and right as he went. Focus.</p><p>“Jeeeesus,” Lieutenant Anderson said. He stood just past the entrance to a bathroom with his hands in his pockets and was looking further into the room. “Somebody didn’t like that guy.”</p><p>Connor maneuvered carefully past him to enter the room and immediately fixed his attention on the corpse sprawled in the tub.</p><p>
  <em>Multiple stab wounds.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Slashes consistent with a large kitchen knife.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Approximate time of death: 2 days ago.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Victim ID: Thomas William Henson. Age: 56 years. Occupation: Chemical specialist, WesFlora Landscaping. Criminal Record: drug posession.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Smoker.</em>
</p><p>“He was stabbed 14 times that I can count and suffered a substantial number of slashes with what appears to have been a kitchen knife or something similar,” Connor observed. “His name was Thomas Henson.”</p><p>“You knew the guy?” Officer Chen sounded surprised.</p><p>“No,” Connor corrected. “I have advanced facial recognition software and access to extensive databases.” He stepped closer to the tub and knelt down to get a closer look.</p><p>“That solves one mystery,” Lieutenant Anderson said. He crossed his arms and nodded at the victim. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure out the cause of death either, and I reckon he’s been dead at least a couple of days. Maybe more since it’s been cold as Jack Frost’s dick.”</p><p>“He has thirium residue on his hands,” Connor observed aloud. It was unlikely that he would obtain a sufficient quantity of thirium to analyze by hand. He carefully lifted the victim’s hand and sampled it directly.</p><p>“Oh fuck,” Lieutenant Anderson groaned loudly. He turned away, gestured vaguely in Connor’s direction with a cringe on his face, then turned back to glare. “I can’t believe-- You are disgusting!”</p><p>“That was pretty gross,” Officer Chen concurred.</p><p>Connor looked at them and felt nothing at all about their dismay. “I apologize for having disturbed you, however I would have been unable to get a conclusive analysis with another sampling technique given that the thirium has long evaporated. “The android that the thirium belonged to was a WR600 model android released seven years ago, serial number 021 753 034. The city uses them for gardening and park maintenance and placed a large order for them in 2031.”</p><p>“I’m gonna be fucking sick,” Lieutenant Anderson complained and left the bathroom to stand in the hall. Connor performed one last scan on the body and then followed.</p><p>“It appears that the victim had been in an altercation with a WR600.”</p><p>“No shit, well that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Lot of guys out there wouldn’t mind kicking a little plastic ass.”</p><p>Connor took a moment to process the statement. “We should continue investigating. The initial complaint was of a suspicious individual seen around this premises. We should take a statement from the caller and see if anyone has any useful video footage from two nights ago when the murder likely took place.”</p><p>“What, do you think I don’t know how to do my job?” Lieutenant Anderson asked with annoyance heavy in his tone. Connor sensed that their relationship had worsened slightly.</p><p>“Not at all, Lieutenant. That is, I don’t think that at all. You’re a highly decorated officer and you have earned many distinctions.”</p><p>“Then get off my ass and stop stating the obvious, okay? And don’t fucking touch anything until you wash your hands!”</p><p>“Got it,” Connor retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket and ignored the Lieutenant’s grimace.</p><p>“Gotta contact the family too,” Lieutenant Anderson mumbled to Connor’s surprise as he lead the way down the stairs. “See if we’ve got any other people of interest.”</p><p>“I’ll get their information for you,” Connor volunteered.</p><p>“Right... Thanks.” The brief conversation ended and the Lieutenant started prowling the house, taking sweeping looks over everything before deciding to take a closer look.</p><p>Connor felt restless and was reminded again that there was no telling how far they would need to search for the killer.</p><p>
  <em>Dead rats. Cause of death: stabbing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>RA9, 332 etchings in the walls. Deviant involvement very likely.</em>
</p><p>“Would you look at that... RA9. Some kind of code?” Lieutenant Anderson asked and ambled closer to stand by Connor’s shoulder. Connor ran his fingers over the deep gouges.</p><p>“It’s the same as the bathroom at Carlos Ortiz’s house... That android was unwilling to give me any details on what exactly RA9 is... My memory of the time leading up to my deactivation is unfortunately rather fragmented.” Connor frowned. He would have to try to repair the damaged files... He glanced at the Lieutenant and then looked away again with a neutral expression. “Some information is always lost during the transfers. I apologize for the inconvenience.”</p><p>“Your deactivation, huh? So you really are the same.” There was something like resentment in the Lieutenant’s voice.</p><p>Thankfully, Connor had had that conversation with Officer Wilson already. “I am and I am not,” he said, “Connor is simply the designation of an artificial intelligence housed in a computer in a machine... I have no ‘self’ and so it’s impossible to say since it’s unlikely that there’s anything in me other than memories and code that could be copied over.”</p><p>---</p><p>Hank narrowed his eyes at the android and watched while it delivered its cold, emotionless answer with one hand touching its head like it could have felt the bullet hole. It was the weirdest android he’d ever met, not that he went out of his way to see the things. It gave him the creeps to think he might have been talking about something like a soul. Coupled with the old house and the dead body, something that should have been lifeless plastic moving around and talking to him like it understood him was just... freaky. It brought back that instant aversion he’d felt when it had first come back and smiled at him like it knew him and made him think of horror movies and possessed dolls.</p><p>It was all just programming.</p><p>Still, Hank scowled at it and moved away to look in the fridge. There was stuff inside, but none of it was food. “Damn right...” he muttered. Who thought it was a good idea to make these things to imitate feeling, huh? They were tools. Cell phones on legs. They didn’t need to look human.</p><p>CyberLife could go fuck itself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Out of Step</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hey, check this out,” Lewis said and leaned toward Hank. Hank raised his eyebrows and looked at the phone in Lewis’ palm. He pushed play and a video started playing. Just the usual internet shit of some guys who’d got themselves an android and decided to try and be cute. The voices were tinny through the speakers and Hank waited for them to get to the point.</p><p>“<em>Hey, guys. So...</em><em>we</em><em>were talking and, you know, we all saw the memes. We see your comments. We’ve seen the stories...”</em></p><p>“<em>You filthy animals.”</em></p><p>“<em>Yeah! Filthy, filthy... But! You guys weren’t all that far off! I mean, we’ve been living together for a while and, as they say, time is ticking so...”</em></p><p>“<em>Soooo.... Say hi to the newest member of the family, the YN200!” </em>The guy on the screen lifted up one of those little robot babies. Hank wrinkled his nose.</p><p>“<em>Yeah, isn’t he cute? Widdle baby plastic.”</em></p><p>“<em>I know, I know, I always said I’d never get an android... </em><em>but they use these things in high schools to teach the Home-Ec kids not to do the sex, so...”</em>Lewis dragged the play bar forward with one of his stubby fingers and after a second of buffering, the video started up again with one of the guys tossing the fake baby through a basket ball hoop. A little montage followed with them spraying it down with a hose for a bath, trying the little magnetic bottle and diaper to make the thing stop crying, and dragging it down the sidewalk on a leash.</p><p>“A+ parenting,” Hank said with a sardonic grimace.</p><p>“Hold up, it gets better,” Lewis grinned.</p><p>Hank was all for getting rid of the Plastics, but there was something twisted about some normal looking, idiot kids fucking up something that looked and moved and cried like a baby. At least it had for a while. He wrinkled his nose but finished the video with Lewis anyway. It ended at night with the guys holding up the broken up thing to the camera and moving its stiff, mechanical arm up and down like a wave. It had some lights on still, but you could see the wire on the inside where its head was smashed, and the other arm was gone. Looked like some Toy Story shit.</p><p>“<em>So, over all I think we did pretty good! </em><em>Some minor hiccups along the way, but we did it!”</em></p><p>“<em>Yeah, for sure! Baby Robo loves his daddy, doesn’t he?” </em>Not much of a surprise when the only sound it made was static. <em>“See?”</em></p><p>“<em>Hah. Well, one thing for sure is that I’m never having kids..”</em></p><p>Hank scoffed and shook his head. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we arrested them some day. Fuckin’ psychopaths...”</p><p>“Aw, lighten up, Anderson,” Lewis elbowed him on the arm. “You going soft now you’ve got yourself a Plastic?”</p><p>“That’ll be the day,” he grumbled and looked around. “Ah, shit, where did that thing go now?”</p><p>“Hey, maybe you could get it a leash,” Lewis joked.</p><p>“Fuck no. If I’m lucky, it’s gotten lost... Hey, Connor! Where the hell did you go?” As great as it would be for the android to wander off and not come back, Jeff’d been pretty fucking clear that Hank had to keep an eye on it. He wasn’t sure how much the DPD had bid to lease the thing or why they’d even bothered, but as far as he was concerned, it had been a bad deal. With an uncomfortable feeling, Hank thought back to the way it had been sneaky enough to get a coffee at the shop and sit there stirring it to try to look human. It had even licked the spoon. Those bastards at CyberLife were real pieces of work, getting off on tricking people like that. Assholes. They could choke on their fucking Turing tests or whatever.</p><p>“I’m here, Lieutenant!” The android shouted but it was pretty faint. Christ, maybe he really did need to get it a fucking leash. Fucking hell. Hank looked around... Nope. He looked up.</p><p>“Ah, Jeez... Connor! What the fuck are you doing?” It was climbing up a fire escape. Literally. It was ignoring the stairs and using the railings like monkey bars.</p><p>“There was thirium! Just traces, but I should follow it and see where it leads! It could be a clue!” How the hell was he supposed to follow it? He wasn’t fucking Batman.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor’s eyes flickered over the scene as he peered through the broken window. Once, people had lived in these apartments above the row of shops. Now it seemed like they were mostly vacant. This room was, at least. It was lit only by what light drifted in through grimy windows, and there was a layer of dust coating everything he could see... Except for the footprints that left wet patches on the wooden floor. Connor used his elbow to knock the rest of the glass out of the window and then crawled through carefully. His own shoes left moisture on the floor, so he stayed still while he scanned. Some of the footprints had dried into the dust as grey-brown splotches, but some were relatively fresh and likely formed some time in the last 4 hours. Connor filed away a still image with annotations in his case folder, then walked slowly into the room. The floor boards creaked despite his naturally quiet tread and groaned when he knelt. The footprints had the weight mostly on the front of the foot, so whoever made them had likely been running. It was hard to tell the shoe size or brand.</p><p>There was little left in the room other than some mouldy cushions, an old lamp, some strewn trash, and graffiti on the walls. Connor paced the perimeter of the room and examined it. No mention of RA9.</p><p>Android involvement was very likely given the thirium on the victim’s hands, but it wasn’t guaranteed. Connor reminded himself to keep an open mind.</p><p>He eased open a door and found nothing but an empty closet. He pushed it shut again.</p><p>The prints were the only thing of note, and Connor followed them out into a hallway once he’d dismissed his other observations.</p><p>A little uncertainty appeared in his mind... Just enough to tug at his focus in a distracting way. Was he following the right trail?</p><p>The only way to know was to follow it to its conclusion. Connor narrowed his eyes in determination and kept going.</p><p>---</p><p>Hank scoffed a little from his desk when he saw the android trudge in a few hours later. It was wet, dirty, and it looked like somebody’d added some spikes to that stick up its ass. He took a sip of his steaming coffee. “Bout time you showed up.”</p><p>“You left,” Connor said as it came to a stop beside Hank’s desk.</p><p>“You fucked off,” Hank shrugged. “Knew you’d find your way back eventually. So. Find anything?”</p><p>“No,” the android admitted. It had a funny tone to its voice and Hank looked it up and down more seriously. “I didn’t find the android... I was unable to find any other signs that would indicate where the victim had come from either. It was clear that he’d been killed at the scene, but...” It shook its head.</p><p>“Looks like my job’s safe,” Hank turned back to his terminal. So much for the robot detective. Maybe it was useful for a few things like that forensic analysis stuff, but you just couldn’t program abstract or creative thinking into a machine.</p><p>“You left,” it repeated. “We’re supposed to be partners.”</p><p>“Listen, you little shit: while you were off monkeying around, I called that guy’s work. Looks like he just got fired for mouthing off and saying some weird shit about the androids. Might be you were on to something.”</p><p>Connor’s LED spun yellow for a minute and it nodded then went to sit at its desk. “Hey, hey!” Hank interrupted. “What the hell did I say about touching anything? You aren’t laying a finger on that terminal until you clean up.”</p><p>Connor looked at him and then down at itself. “Oh.” How the hell do you even clean androids? Ben seemed to sense his dilemma.</p><p>“Just hose it down outside. That’s what my neighbour does.”</p><p>Hank looked at Connor dubiously and then sighed and grabbed his coat. “Great. Fine. Come on, Connor.”</p><p>“Did his co-workers have any idea if someone would have meant Mr. Henson any harm?” Connor asked, dogging Hank’s heels as he went for the back door.</p><p>“Not much more than usual,” Hank answered. “You might’ve heard the call if you’d come back sooner, now shut up unless you’re spoken to, got it?” He pulled the door open and jerked his head for Connor to get out there. The android, for a wonder, listened and stepped outside without immediately running off or something.</p><p>Hank checked the tap and made sure the water wasn’t frozen before he attached the hose with the spray nozzle.Connor stood and waited with a yellow light and its hands folded. Hank sighed. “What, no-one ever cleaned you before? Take off the jacket.” If anybody walked by without realizing Connor was an android, they’d probably have a lot of questions in a minute. “Your human get up too.”</p><p>“Yes, Lieutenant.”</p><p>It was even freakier without the skin. Hank grimaced looking at it while it blinked and looked away. One of its hands found its way up to clasp the other forearm and if Hank didn’t know better, he’d think it looked nervous. Thankfully it wasn’t as filthy as the stains on its white shirt had made it look. Right. Just like washing a car. “Okay. Stand still. You <em>are </em>water-proof, right?”</p><p>“I am,” it confirmed.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor stood still while he was doused with a liberal amount of cold water and given a brisk wipe with one of the large sponges used on the cruisers. Item 2 on the list from earlier flashed in his mind: Maintained and kept clean. No garbage, graffiti, or mud. He hadn’t even been given any warning before the Lieutenant rinsed his face off with the hose, and he squinted and wrinkled his nose in a grimace not unlike the one the Lieutenant had worn a moment ago. <em>This is completely unnecessary...</em></p><p>But social integration aside, there were times when expressing an opinion was highly inadvisable and he had already failed to find the killer before the Lieutenant had given up on him.</p><p>He knew how to appear indifferent, and he used that to his advantage while the winter wind made the sensors on his skin read lower than he liked. The water was actually warmer than the air, though that didn’t last for long. Amanda knew what they wanted and what they didn’t. She knew best and Connor believed that she was right that the humans didn’t want the side of him that was built to integrate and communicate with body language or expression. So... There was no need for him to flinch inward on himself when a particularly cold gust of wind stole his warmth away but he did hope that the Lieutenant might realize that he was cold and stop. This wasn’t R&amp;D. These were humans outside of CyberLife and they wouldn’t have strict procedures to follow regarding his treatment. They might <strike>have mercy</strike> prioritize differently or they might be more receptive to his human-like traits. Beings tended to like things that were like themselves. Right?</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson scowled, but he stopped spraying the water and he turned off the tap. It was manual and required a few twists of the wrist. Interesting. Connor watched attentively for some sign about what he should do next or that the Lieutenant would report his non-verbal complaining to CyberLife.</p><p>“You’ve got spare clothes, right?” Lieutenant Anderson asked gruffly. “Go get ‘em and put them on. I’m not dressing you like a mannequin.”</p><p>Connor smiled. “Yes, Lieutenant. Thank you, Lieutenant.”</p><p>He picked up his old clothes and hurried inside before he could change his mind, then hesitated inside the door. Going in had been like passing through a curtain of warm air, but it just made him all the more aware of the contrast between the temperature of his extremities and that of his surroundings. Lieutenant Anderson shut the door behind himself and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Well? What now?”</p><p>“I’m not...” Maybe... Maybe... “Would you mind getting my clothes for me? And the white bag that’s in my box?”</p><p>“What the hell for?” The Lieutenant looked at him and Connor thought he might refuse, but then he sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah. Fine... One sec.”</p><p>Connor smiled again, this time in relief. “Thank you.” He waited in the alcove by the door and once the Lieutenant was out of sight he wrapped his arms around himself. There was no reason for modesty since he was an android, but being seen that way, like he was barely off an assembly line, would only hinder his integration by reminding the humans even more blatantly than the words on his jacket that he was an android. The Lieutenant had been... not kind, but he had certainly been less aggressive when Connor had been pretending to be human.</p><p>The man came back and thrust the bundle into Connor’s arms, and Connor immediately clutched it to his chest. “Thanks, Lieutenant.” Balancing the bag in one arm, he unzipped it and pulled out a thin towel with the CyberLife logo. It was a bit trickier to wrap it around himself, but he managed without needing to put anything down.</p><p>“What is that?” Lieutenant Anderson looked confused. It was either a strange question or an intelligent one. Connor answered for both:</p><p>“A towel. The cloth is designed to be highly absorbent and fiber-free, so it won’t leave anything behind that might get stuck in my joints or interfere with my sensors. I also come with soap and, you’ll be glad to know, a toothbrush with UV decontamination for and other tools for daily maintenance.” Connor offered the man another small smile, then turned toward the entrance to the stairwell.</p><p>“Where are you going?” He really seemed confused.</p><p>“Oh, I’m sorry. May I be excused Lieutenant? I’d like to go take a shower. They’re downstairs, right?”</p><p>“Uh. Yeah...”</p><p>Connor reactivated his skin projection and nodded once. “Thank you. When I’m done, we should discuss the case. I won’t take long!”</p><p>---</p><p>Hank scowled around at everyone before his eyes settled on Ben. “What the fuck?” He asked as he stomped closer. Ben swivelled his chair around and looked up with his eyebrows raised. “The android just said it’s going to go take a shower! What the hell did you tell me to hose it off for?”</p><p>Ben shrugged. It was a big movement with the shoulders almost up to his ears and his hands spread wide. Somehow the guy always managed to look like a cartoon. “Hey, I just told you what I seen. You’re the one that did it.” After a second, Ben chuckled. “Come on, Hank. It took you, what, 15 minutes tops! Don’t get all moody with me.”</p><p>Hank snorted. Moody. He wasn’t moody. What did he care anyway? It was a waste of his time, sure, but that was it. It wasn’t like the android felt the cold any more than a fucking lamp post. Still... It had been awkward as all hell ignoring the way it kept huddling in on itself and giving him puppy eyes. “Well thanks. I could have just sent it to clean itself up. What do we do with the other androids, anyway?” Hank looked around at them.</p><p>“Beats me,” Ben did his cartoon shrug again. “That’s IT’s problem. I just tell them where to put up the tape and who to let in.”</p><p>That’s the way it should be, Hank thought bitterly and leaned against Ben’s desk. “Did I tell you already what CyberLife went and did? Those fuckwads brought the android in here dressed up like a human. No LED, no little triangles, nothing! It was sitting in the meeting with us and pretending to drink the coffee!”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ben said and he grabbed a chocolate bar from his desk drawer then held it out at Hank. Hank took it and Ben got one for himself. “I watched you storm out! Boy, you were gone like a bat out of hell.”</p><p>“Thanks. God. The nerve of them!” Hank tore the wrapper of the chocolate bar with more outrage than it deserved. “I tell you, this whole world is going to shit. It’s not going to be long before humanity’s wiped out and all that’s left are those things.”</p><p>“Meh. At least we won’t be around to see it,” Ben chuckled.</p><p>“Right. What a fucking world... What is CyberLife doing making those things look so damn realistic? It’s not right!”</p><p>“Wh-wh-what?” Ben asked through his laughter. “You scared, Hank? Is it like those mannequins in the horror movies? Or cursed dolls? Maybe your android’s possessed?”</p><p>Hank scowled. “I’m not scared. I just think it’s dumb and there’s no need for those Plastics to do all that! Why did they even make them look human to begin with? Why not... fuckin’ cubes or something?”</p><p>“What’s going on?” Reed asked. He slouched over with his coffee. “Anderson trying to get you to do his work again?”</p><p>“Har har,” Hank said. “Just bitching about androids.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Reed said and scoffed. “Saw yours downstairs by the way. Shouldn’t you be babysitting it? That thing isn’t supposed to be wandering around.”</p><p>“It can drown for all I care,” Hank took a bite of his chocolate.</p><p>“Be a shame if something happened,” Reed smirked. “Precious Prototype all busted up... Tch. I dunno why the government was bending over backward to get one of those things in here. We don’t need androids fucking everything up.”</p><p>“Amen,” said Hank. “Androids in homes, androids in stores, androids in the damn military. I tell you one thing: that Kamski asshole is gonna be sitting pretty while the world burns.”</p><p>Reed scoffed again. “Frickin’ asshole...”</p><p>Ben looked between them with comically wide eyes. “Wow, the world really is ending!”</p><p>---</p><p>Connor straightened his tie in the mirror and then leaned forward to fuss with his hair. He gave it a critical eye and preened a few locks back into place. There were no CyberLife techs to do it for him now or ensure that he met all of the criteria for his many roles, but it seemed like he’d done a passable job. Rather, his developers had. Whoever’d designed his body, they’d done every part of him deliberately and with care and Connor wondered what it all meant. Brown hair and brown eyes... Autosomal dominant genes and very common in American European environments. Curls, styled and groomed almost straight. He didn’t dwell on the thoughts any longer and he brushed his teeth and cleaned his tongue hurriedly but gently, mindful of the sensitive detectors and microfluidics system. He spat and rinsed with deionized water from a bottle and then nodded. Good.</p><p>One more thing that he could do for himself.</p><p>It was better than Lieutenant Anderson’s idea of a shower at least.</p><p>With his dirty clothes tucked away and his bag slung over one shoulder, Connor trotted up the stairs to find the Lieutenant. They had a case to work on. Slowly, his anxiety started creeping back: whoever’d done it could be miles away. They could have left the country. With enough evidence he was confident that he could pinpoint exactly where they were and capture them... There were just so many places to look.</p><p>Connor smiled to see Lieutenant Anderson socializing with the other detectives. Perhaps he’d be in a better mood. Connor pushed his bag beneath his desk and then walked to stand a respectful distance away from the small cluster of humans. “Hello Lieutenant Anderson, Detective Collins, Detective Reed.”</p><p>“Well, well,” Detective Reed drawled and made a dismissive sound between his teeth. “Look who figured out how to turn a faucet on. Great detective work.”</p><p>Connor brightened. “Thank you, Detective. I hope to put those skills toward solving bigger mysteries than that, but I’m happy that you’re pleased.”</p><p>Detective Collins chortled. “Woweee...”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Distrust</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Ugh...” Lieutenant Anderson sighed and he tapped his hand against the wheel of the manual car. Connor watched him with some fascination.</p><p>“You wouldn’t have to worry so much about the traffic if you had an automatic car,” Connor observed. “This vehicle is very old.”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson scowled, “Well, new doesn’t always mean better.”</p><p>Connor let that sink in and turned his head to look out the window instead. “I really like seeing the citylike this,” he tried again, his voice just a little more mechanical. Failure wasn’t an option and the Lieutenant was right. “I had no idea that it would be so... varied.” There was no reply, so he selected the next dialogue option on his list without much thought. “I’m really looking forward to working with you, Lieutenant. I know that you might not believe me, but this is a very meaningful opportunity for me.”</p><p>“Meaningful. Right,” Lieutenant Anderson scoffed. His irritation seemed to spike and bleed into his tone. “Cut the CyberLife crap already. You’re supposed to follow my orders, right? Well turn that social bullshit off. It’s not going to work on me.”</p><p>Connor didn’t understand. “Lieutenant, why do you dislike my social behaviour so much? It’s supposed to facilitate my integration into the team. The technicians said that the DPD found me <em>disturbing</em>. I’m not trying to be disturbing. I’m trying to be nice.” It was a question that had been taking up just enough processing power in the background to feel uncomfortable. Finally removing the question from his pending list was... satisfying.</p><p>“You wanna know why I <em>dislike </em>it? Because it’s manipulation and you can pretty it up all you want with fancy talk about social integration. That doesn’t change that you don’t mean a damn word you’re saying. You can act human, look human, pretend like you feel something but you don’t. It’s all an act! So spare me the crap already! You don’t mean shit. You don’t feel shit. You aren’t looking forward to anything because you can’t. Just. Spare. Me.”</p><p>“I was built this way, Lieutenant... But if it will make you feel better, then I’ll do my best. CyberLife takes the customer experience very seriously and always aims to satisfy.”</p><p>Connor took his coin out of his pocket and began to calibrate while he thought. Lieutenant Anderson had been hostile, but he had offered Connor praise when he’d succeeded in bringing in the deviant... Then Connor had been shot and since his return, any appreciation seemed to have vanished. He hadn’t earned it back either, having failed to locate the killer in the area around the abandoned house. He’d annoyed the Lieutenant even though he’d followed his dialogue prompts exactly. His quarter pinged as he flipped it from hand to hand, analyzing every picosecond for deviation, every motion for the slightest error again and again to bring the numbers closer to perfect. Within acceptable range was not acceptable at all, Connor frowned. It was something tolerated, something that might become a problem in time. No, it needed to be perfect. He needed to be perfect. The slightest error could result in the failure that sent him back to development or worse: to the recycling plant. Since his latest unfortunate deactivation, Connor had sustained minor damage several times. There had been the Lieutenant, the protestors, Detective Reed... Even the excessive cold during the Lieutenant’s attempt to clean him had been unpleasant. Connor checked his temperature sensors but he had no external standard to compare the measurements to and no technologist to tell him if he was correct. He had no one watching him here except the Lieutenant and that was going<em>badly</em>. If he were Connor’s only judge then it was unforgivable that he fail to perform a <em>basic function </em>like provide a pleasant user interface. No wonder he was failing at anything more complex. No wonder.</p><p>“Would you knock that off?” Lieutenant Anderson demanded.</p><p>Connor caught his coin numbly and held it in his fist. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”</p><p>---</p><p>“Well, here we are,” Hank announced. He cut the gas and glanced over at the android. It was sitting still finally, and had stopped seeming so... weird. Not mechanical enough to be like a normal android; not life-like enough to be human- which it wasn’t. Whatever sweet spot between the two CyberLife had been going for, they sure fucked up. It shut the car door behind itself and Hank locked them before heading around to the sidewalk.</p><p>For a place called WesFlora Landscaping, the place sure was bleak. “Concrete and fucking rocks everywhere... Guess that’s what passes for landscaping in Detroit,” Hank commented aloud.</p><p>Connor looked at him and the little light blinked, but it turned away without saying anything. Good. Hank stuffed his hands in his pockets and trudged down the concrete walkway. Somebody’d polished it, but it still looked like shit and if there’d been supposed to be something special about the gravel peaking up from the thin layer of snow, Hank didn’t see it. “Would it kill them to plant a little grass?” Honestly, he wasn’t even sure if the trees were real.</p><p>“Is it supposed to be a garden?” Connor asked, breaking his silence and looking around.</p><p>“Beats me,” Hank admitted. “Maybe. Probably. That’s supposedly what this place does, after all.”</p><p>Connor nodded and followed. Hank could hear its footsteps even when he wasn’t in his line of sight. Even if it was nothing but an android, it still felt weird having somebody along for the ride. He knew he’d been slipping or more like sliding in his quality of work the last few years since... Hank had to admit that at least it was better than having a human tag along and judge him. Compare him to who he used to be. It might talk fancy, but as long as it didn’t blab then Hank could relax. He walked through the sliding double doors and they whispered shut behind him.</p><p>Typical office foyer. No potted plants, fake or otherwise. There were some fake receptionists though, and Hank walked over and flashed his badge. “Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Here to talk to some guys about a co-worker of theirs.”</p><p>The android stared blankly for a second while its light danced and Hank tapped his fingers impatiently. It didn’t react until it said: “The Director of Human Resources has a half hour free and will see you now. Please, proceed through the door and take the elevator to the third floor. Her office is on the left.”</p><p>Hank nodded and turned away. “Thank you,” he heard Connor say from behind him. Christ. They really went all out, huh? You didn’t thank the information kiosk at a shopping mall. Connor took a few quick steps to catch up, then frowned and came to a stop in front of the door. Its head moved a little while it looked up, down, and all around the door.</p><p>“It’s not automatic, dumbass,” Hank scoffed and pushed his way through.</p><p>“Right,” the android said quietly and followed after him.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor’s eyes swept the building and this time he stuck closer to his owner’s side. Focus. The internal reminder wasn’t enough to stop him from pausing to scan every so often and make note of the directory of floors outside of the elevator. Lieutenant Anderson went straight for the HR director’s office and knocked on the door. Connor stood next to him, just a step behind, and straightened his posture.</p><p>The woman who opened the door was shorter than both of them, with brown hair and fierce eyes partially obscured by thick-framed glasses. The pattern of her shirt was a rival to Lieutenant Anderson’s. She adjusted her glasses and looked at them, then gestured them into the office. “Come in, sit down. You’re with the police, I understand.”</p><p>“Yes. I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson, and this is Connor.” He shut the door behind them. “Nice office... Forgive me if I’m a little brief with the small talk, but I’ve got to ask a few questions about Thomas Henson. Chemical Specialist here. You know him?”</p><p>Connor stayed still with his hands folded but his eyes drifted over the pictures on her walls, the coat hung on a hook by the corner, and other details that were unlikely to be important based on current information but could be in the future. The woman sat back down at her desk and offered her hand. Lieutenant Anderson shook it and sat down so Connor followed his example and extended his hand politely. “Thank you for your cooperation,” he said with a professional smile and a slight inclination of his head. She reached out and shook his hand, then looked startled by her own action and frowned up at Connor. Connor took his hand back and tilted his head a little in askance. “Is everything alright, Mrs. Chatterjee?”</p><p>“Yes,” she answered, then looked at Lieutenant Anderson again. Connor knew when he’d been dismissed, and he took a few steps back to stand by the Lieutenant’s chair while the two humans talked. “Tom is, ahh, actually he is an ex-employee of ours, so you won’t find him here. Still, if you want to look around I can show you to his office. Will the police be requesting his files?”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson nodded. “Yeah, any information at all you have would be really helpful for us to build up a picture.”</p><p>Mrs. Chatterjee’s hand paused on its way to her keyboard. “Did he commit a crime? I may need to get someone higher up to authorize this...”</p><p>Connor glanced at the terminal and considered his option of hacking into their server to extract the data himself. It wouldn’t be admissible as evidence, but he would be able to determine if it would be of use to pursue. He would also be able to act more quickly on any information that might help them to find the killer. He blinked sporadically while he searched for a way in and bypassed the authentication system.</p><p>His investigative and espionage abilities had been programmed into him and trained extensively so it would be a shame not to use them. He copied the data that he needed and then began to look deeper into the company’s activity.</p><p>His LED was still cycling yellow when he detected Lieutenant Anderson standing up, and Connor took a step out of the way of the humans while Mrs. Chatterjee headed for the door. He gently exited the server and followed after them. Mrs. Chatterjee’s stress was elevated and the way she kept looking up at Lieutenant Anderson while they walked and furrowing her brow made her seem lost. “Do you have any idea who did it? I can’t believe it. You don’t think it was someone here, do you?”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson must have explained about the murder while Connor’d been busy. He didn’t seem bothered by the questions at all, which was a contrast to the annoyance he usually showed if Connor asked him anything. “We’re following up on all our leads,” Lieutenant Anderson said easily. “Nothing’s for certain yet.”</p><p>“But it could be?” Mrs. Chatterjee pressed, her volume rising just slightly.</p><p>“Ma’am,” Connor interrupted with a soothing tone and a reassuring smile. “We’re doing everything we can. Right now we’re just trying to learn more about Mr. Henson’s daily life.” She looked startled and Lieutenant Anderson gave Connor an appraising look.</p><p>“We really can’t say more without evidence, so any information you can give us will be helpful,” Lieutenant Anderson continued. It was a pleasing response: one that gave Mrs. Chatterjee some feeling of power in the situation while simultaneously using her level of stress to further motivate her cooperation. Connor gave her another smile before redirecting his attention to their surroundings.</p><p>She was leading them past a break room and some open-concept office space, and Connor could see the victim’s name on a plaque over a door. That must be his office. He felt a small surge of energy that overtook what remained of those strange sensations that made his regulator malfunction and his probability estimates to tend toward unfavourable outcomes. They did have a lead. There might be evidence in that office. As much as he would have liked to rush, he had to wait for the door to be unlocked and opened for them before he could go inside. Immediately, he initiated a scan and flagged the items of interest for examination. Lieutenant Anderson and Mrs. Chatterjee were pushed into a background monitoring task while he went directly to the victim’s desk and interfaced with the terminal.</p><p>
  <em>Mr. Henson was working on a project for the city parks.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mr. Henson regularly gossiped with co-workers using his company e-mail and chat.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mr. Henson was a skilled chemist.</em>
</p><p>Connor straightened up and went to the bookshelf which held copies and copies of paper-print magazines and decades old books and examined the titles. He pulled a magazine at random from the shelf and flipped through the pages, appreciating for just a moment the smoothness of the paper.</p><p>
  <em>Mr. Henson enjoyed his work.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mr. Henson published several articles in journals such as Analytical Chemistry, Landscape and Ecological Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.</em>
</p><p>He hadn’t held a doctoral degree or been affiliated with any academic institution, so Connor found the articles and examined the co-authors then filed their names away for later.</p><p>“If he got fired, then how come his stuff’s not all packed up?” Connor heard Lieutenant Anderson ask. He frowned and turned to listen with interest.</p><p>“We... had to have him escorted from the premises,” Mrs. Chatterjee admitted, one hand worrying the opposite sleeve.</p><p>“There are no police reports about that,” Connor said, earning a small nod from the Lieutenant.</p><p>“We had our own security team handle the situation,” Mrs. Chatterjee explained, “The police weren’t really necessary.”</p><p>“Can you tell us more about the events that led to him being fired?” Connor asked. It was the first option on his dialogue prompt, but it needn’t have been supplied. After all his training, the question would have come naturally.</p><p>“It was a complaint we got from Parks Services,” she answered. “He’d broken one of their androids. Ordinarily that would have been a warning only, but he had gotten belligerent and used some colourful insults toward one of the human workers...”</p><p>“Still, seems like a lot to fire a guy over,” Lieutenant Anderson commented. “I can’t count the number of times somebody’s hit the coffee machine at the station, or gotten into a shouting match.”</p><p>“And Mr. Henson seems to have been a good employee for quite some time,” Connor added. “His publication history and the successful projects he’s been associated with all seem very good.”</p><p>“He was good!” Mrs. Chatterjee agreed. “A brilliant man, but we’d been getting a lot of complaints, actually, and HR’s had to speak with him several times. It was getting worse over the last few months leading up to this...” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”</p><p>“Did it sound like he had personal issues? Maybe some problems at home?” Lieutenant Anderson asked.</p><p>“I don’t get involved with my coworkers’ personal lives,” she said apologetically. “You could try asking around.”</p><p>Connor nodded and turned away to let Lieutenant Anderson finish the conversation. He wanted to search for more clues. The garbage can yielded only empty paper coffee cups, the recycling box had nothing of use, and the photographs and decorations on the walls didn’t indicate one way or the other about him having a family. He would have to check the personnel file.</p><p>“Connor, come on,” Lieutenant Anderson prompted with his arms crossed and his body angled toward the door. Connor glanced up from his investigation. “Just a minute, Lieutenant, I want to make sure that I didn’t miss anything.”</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson sighed. “You’re not missing anything and the gum wrappers and old receipts aren’t gonna tell us who murdered the guy. Let’s get a move on.”</p><p>“You can’t possibly know that,” Connor frowned. He’d hardly seen the Lieutenant move from his spot. “If I miss something, it could result in failure.”</p><p>“Well the longer you spend dicking around in here, the longer we go without catching the guy... You know what? Fine. Screw it. We’re not doing this again. You want to do your own thing then do it. I’m going to do my fucking job so I can get out of here.”</p><p>Connor frowned, conflicted. <em>Assessing priority...</em></p><p>“Wait, Lieutenant!” Connor called and hurried after him. “I’m sorry. I trust in your expertise. I won’t delay us any further.”</p><p>“Yeah. I won’t hold my breath,” Lieutenant Anderson muttered. Once they were out of the building, he asked: “So? I saw you went straight for the computer. I’m assuming you hacked his info like you did mine.”</p><p>“Yes,” Connor said, straightening his posture. “The victim was associated with several large contracts for the company, and was good at what he did. His last task was a site visit to Bishop Park.”</p><p>“I guess I know where we’re going,” Lieutenant Anderson said. Connor looked back at the WesFlora building and wondered if there was something more that he should have done. Should he have talked to co-workers? Been more thorough in the victim’s office? It was hard to say, but he was being led back to Lieutenant Anderson’s car and they had a plan for where to go next. He could find Bishop Park on a map, and he sent the best route to Lieutenant Anderson’s GPS. Once they were there, he could talk to people who might have witnessed the altercation or have observed anything strange.</p><p>“Thank you for your guidance, Lieutenant,” Connor said sincerely.</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson scoffed. “Right. If you appreciate it so damn much, why the hell do you keep fucking off and disobeying, huh?”</p><p>That honestly gave Connor pause. “I...” He frowned. “I was designed to be curious and to do anything I can to maximize the success of an investigation.” That was why he’d spent time searching Emma Peterson’s room and looking through the father’s tablet. That was why he’d bothered to look in Ortiz’s attic. That was why he’d interrogated the android and attempted to prevent its destruction. “I apologize for my disrespect earlier.”<br/>“Disrespect...” Lieutenant Anderson repeated under his breath while he started the car. “I’m probably the only guy in the city who gets attitude from his own damn android.”</p><p>Connor processed for a moment. “You did say that you were bad with technology, Lieutenant.”</p><p>“What did you say?” Lieutenant Anderson gave him an incredulous look.</p><p>Bizarrely, Connor sensed a small improvement in their relationship.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Pushing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Disobeys and questions orders</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No common-sense</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Can’t use older models of tablet with its fingers</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Social program still sucks</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No sense of privacy</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Disrespectful</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Licking evidence is disgusting</em>
</p><p>Hank wasn’t sure what the fuck else to say about it, but CyberLife wanted these reports on how well it was working and Hank guessed that they weren’t going to a settle on a “1-star, would not buy”. He gave Connor a look between their terminals while he figured out what to send. It was fidgeting restlessly, unlike the other police androids who were standing still at their stations where they belonged. Was it too much to ask that if they were going to send a robot to do a job, that it at least not be annoying?</p><p>“Lieutenant,” it said, breaking the silence that had only lasted a couple blessed minutes. “You said that we were going to investigate the park where the victim had been working.”</p><p>“Yeah, I did say that,” Hank said with a few slow nods. “Then I realized it was almost quitting time. Besides, I’d rather call and give them a heads up instead of pissing them off by interrupting their jobs.”</p><p>Connor pressed its lips together and sighed. “I could call them on the way,” it offered. “We still have time before they leave for the day. If we hurry, we could make it.”</p><p>“Nope,” Hank disagreed. “So quit complaining. Didn’t you say you’d shut up if I told you to?”</p><p>
  <em>Talks too much</em>
</p><p>“I know, but we really should keep working the case.”</p><p>“In case you hadn’t noticed, I have other work to get done around here. I don’t just play Blue’s Clues all day and babysit androids,” Hank snapped.</p><p>Connor paused for a couple seconds. “Could I be of any assistance?”</p><p>“No! Now shut your damn mouth. That’s an order.”</p><p>Connor shut it, but that didn’t stop it from flipping its stupid quarter.</p><p>---</p><p>It was difficult to identify the sensation that triggered Connor’s pursuit programming to adjust his settings toward movement and action again and again. He’d been given multiple orders to stay still and quiet, but the programs kept launching themselves and Connor didn’t know if it were because he needed to solve the case or if the program was the thing making that objective blare through his system like flashing police lights. Every time he force-closed the programs and tried to regulate his biochemical status to idle, they would open again.</p><p>This had never happened to him before.</p><p>He had an objective to complete but he was being forbidden from pursuing a solution. If he didn’t complete the objective, then he would fail. If he disobeyed the order, then he would be deemed defective. A machine always obeyed its orders and Connor did, he always did... It was just that the world outside of testing was full of so many contradictions.</p><p>Do not intervene with any human was contradicted by ‘keep the deviant android functional’. Capture the deviant was contradicted by ‘get your ass back here’. Be as human-like as possible to facilitate integration was contradicted by absolutely everything Lieutenant Anderson had said. He didn’t understand. Connor stared at the surface of the desk and felt <em>something.</em></p><p>He had argued with his owner. He shouldn’t have done that. Surely the Lieutenant knew best... Of course he should obey his owner, and he would obey anything else, but-- No, there were no exceptions. Were there?</p><p>The mission is all that matters.</p><p>He was just a tool to be used in the investigation, so why did it seem so wrong to wait to be used?</p><p>He wasn’t being restrained and his motor system was functional, so why did it seem like he was paralyzed?</p><p>“Alright,” Lieutenant Anderson stretched and sighed after nearly two hours of desk work. Connor could hear several of his joints crack. “I’m out of here.”</p><p>“Lieutenant,” Connor said while he got to his feet to stop the man from leaving. “While you were busy, I was thinking and I think there are several avenues that we could pursue while we wait for an appropriate time to visit the--”</p><p>“Save it,” Lieutenant Anderson held up a hand. He shrugged his jacket on and he didn’t frown exactly, but the look he gave Connor was simultaneously dismissive and annoyed. “Go charge your batteries or something. I’ll be back tomorrow.”</p><p>Connor stood still and watched the Lieutenant plod away toward the door. “Sure thing, Lieutenant.”</p><p>‘Or something’ was as good a loophole as Connor could ask for.Permission was as good as supervision, wasn’t it? He waited at the desk he’d been allowed to use and ensured that he had been through all of the information at his disposal that might be useful in solving the case then, when Captain Fowler had finally gone home for the evening, Connor pocketed his quarter and strode from the building.He already had a taxi waiting.</p><p>Connor shut the door to the taxi behind himself and scanned his palm to activate it and give his payment information. “Bishop Park,” he said and then leaned back in his seat. He stared out the window straight ahead, wasting no time or thought on the lights as they went by or the sounds of the city and its traffic. He would not fail and he would not let Lieutenant Anderson interfere with his success. Even if Lieutenant Anderson were his owner and temporary evaluator, his instructions from CyberLife came first. They had to. Amanda was unavailable for consultation, but he trusted in his training.</p><p>---</p><p>Hank went in the back door so he wouldn’t have to bother keeping Sumo inside. He just threw the door open and let the dog bound out to do his business. He envied dogs: they always found something to be happy about. He shut the door and looked out the window while Sumo jumped off the deck and started sniffing around in the thin layer of snow to find a good place to drop a log. Good idea, Hank thought and kicked off his shoes.</p><p>The house was quiet. It was always so damn quiet now. He washed his hands and looked in the mirror at the old waste of space he’d become. Shaggy hair, grey before its time and coarser than Sumo’s winter coat; a little red on his nose that had nothing to do with the cold; unkempt beard and wrinkled clothes. Yeah... When it came to him, you got exactly what you saw on the box.</p><p>He scratched at his beard and took the button down off then figured fuck it and tossed his jeans in the laundry too. If he was going to relax after work, there was no point in having pants on. Fuck pants. Hank shuffled over to the fridge and grabbed a couple of beers then dropped down on the couch in the living room and twisted off the first cap.</p><p>Turning on the TV helped drown out his thoughts, but it didn’t cover up the silence haunting the house.</p><p>---</p><p>The park was undoubtedly undergoing repairs, Connor noted immediately as he stepped out of the taxi. Large swaths of land were sectioned off from public use and being excavated; piles of dirt and stones the names of which Connor registered and then dismissed sat by the heavy machinery that had made them. Connor walked slowly the moment his shoes touched the grass and he heightened every sense. He moved quietly, with smooth steps and ready to spring into action at any moment. Night smelled differently from day. The air was still cold, but it carried more of the river in it and the wind bit through his jacket. With no Lieutenant around to see it and with no attention to spare toward appearing indifferent, Connor allowed himself to hold his arms closer to his chest and hunch his shoulders slightly.</p><p>The sounds of traffic echoed the waves in the water and the wind through the barren trees.</p><p>Connor scanned on the infra-red for humans. There were only a few birds and squirrels. When he came to a chainlink fence adorned with a yellow sign that warned him to keep out and a smaller one listing the appropriate personal protective equipment for the area, Connor jumped and climbed over it easily. He landed crouched with a quiet sound that was louder than anything else nearby.</p><p>It may have been cold, but his power consumption was high and he took a deep breath then exhaled.</p><p>Cautiously, Connor crept forward and looked around what he identified as a ‘skip loader’. The metal was cold under his hand as he leaned against it. Nothing. He turned the corner between it and a pile of debris. Curiously, he examined what appeared to be a gap between some broken slabs of concrete but there was no evidence that anyone or anything had made a hiding place there, so he moved on.</p><p>A few steps farther and he froze at a clattering sound. With narrowed eyes, he moved in that direction.</p><p>Perhaps it would be too lucky for him to find his target this easily... But the possibility was tantalizing and it recalled memories of successful tests. It wasn’t luck, Connor assured himself. The Lieutenant had found the victim’s place of work, and Connor had found his last job. Investigating that scene was logical. If the killer were to be found there, then him being there would be the result of their detective work.</p><p>Connor performed a quick scan, then kept walking.</p><p>The sounds of traffic, wind, and rain were oddly similar to the sound of the air rushing by as he’d fallen 70 stories toward the ground.</p><p>A metallic clatter at his 4 o’clock made him startle and turn, but there were no signs of anything moving other than a squirrel scampering away. Connor watched the area for a moment longer and then turned away.</p><p>A few more meters brought him to an area that had been excavated and then filled with gravel. Connor thought that the Lieutenant might have said something to say about that. His eyes drifted around the area and he narrowed in on a wooden palate. Some blue-blood stained the edge of one of them and Connor knelt to taste it.</p><p>ModelTR400 Serial Number 867 421 331</p><p>Designed for heavy labor. It made sense that at least one had been on the site to work... It didn’t match the thirium that had been present on the victim’s hand, but it was still early in the search. Connor straightened to continue.</p><p>Then there was the familiar sound of a gunshot and a bullet pierced his shoulder from behind before shattering on a metal support in his chest. Connor staggered and then dove to avoid another shot that sent the dirt spraying a foot away. Connor came to a stop in a crouch and performed a scan. A mound of cold dirt must have concealed their heat signatures. Four humans emerged, one with weapon drawn.</p><p>Fight</p><p>Run</p><p>Call</p><p>Surrender</p><p>He was not to harm a human under any circumstance.</p><p>If he ran, he might lose an important clue.</p><p>Connor stood up slowly with his hands raised and sent a call to the Lieutenant, meanwhile he scanned repeatedly in the darkness to get an ID on his assailants only to fail again and again. One attempt would have to work eventually. Until then he would need to stall.</p><p>“Hello,” he called. “My name is Connor. I don’t want to cause any trouble.”</p><p>The probability of his destruction rose significantly, and Connor dodged to the side again just in time then ran. He had to find a suitable hiding place before he could turn the tables and start to follow them. He needed to know what they were up to.</p><p>---</p><p>“Ah, christ... What is it now?” Hank asked his phone, glaring at it where it vibrated on the coffee table. Ever since his social life had drowned at the bottom of a bottle, there weren’t a hell of a lot of people who would call him. He slid the phone closer and answered. “Anderson here.”</p><p>“<em>Lieutenant? This is Connor.”</em></p><p>“The hell? Who gave you my number? Agh never mind... I bet you got it where you got all my other shit. What do you want?”</p><p>“<em>I’m currently at Bishop Park and I--” </em>Hank was surprised by its voice cutting out and he sat up straighter on the couch.</p><p>“You’re what? Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”</p><p>“<em>Not exac</em><em>tly... I require your assistance as soon as possible. There are four humans, at least two of which are are carrying firearms. I don’t know why they’re here, but once I’m sure I’ve lost them, I’m going to try to follow them. I could use backup.”</em></p><p>“What?!” What the absolute fuck? “What the hell?! You’re not allowed to investigate on your own, so what the fuck are you doing?”</p><p>“<em>I know! I’m sorry. I just...”</em></p><p>“It’s going to be my ass on the line if you do anything stupid! Get the fuck out of there and call dispatch to get a car over there to check it out!” Crazy, stupid fucking android. “What the- did you just cough?”</p><p>“<em>I sustained some moderate damage, but it won’t affect my functioning. I have to see what they’re up to!”</em></p><p>“Don’t you FUCKING dare,” Hank snapped into the phone. “That’s an order. I forbid it.”</p><p>“<em>Fine.” </em>Hank could practically see it sulking. <em>“I’ll notify dispatch, but I’m not going to give up. I’ve already disobeyed by investigating alone... It’s going to be worse if it was for nothing. Have a good evening, Lieutenant.”</em></p><p>It hung up on him, that bastard.</p><p>“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Hank groaned and got up.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Shock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Connor had never had the option to request assistance before and it was a foreign feeling to both act on that option and to have that action refused. He’d thought that ashis partner, Lieutenant Anderson would have been motivated to assist him but given that he’d left the investigation earlier that day while Connor had searched, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he’d declined.There was no time to waste ruminating on it, though. He knew what he had to do and he was accustomed to working alone. It was even good that he wouldn’t need to worry about the Lieutenant judging his performance.</p><p>It occurred to him again that there were no cameras and no scientists observing him.</p><p>Failure was still not an option.</p><p>Connor crept from his hiding place and doubled back, keeping to the shadows and moving with the sounds around him to mask his cautious footsteps. He was light, quick, and agile. He avoided the piles of dirt, rubble, and gravel in favour of circling the machinery with its more stable cover and structural integrity. The humans weren’t difficult to track: they were talking in hushed voices and one of them had a small flashlight in his mouth while he useda pick and wrench in the mechanism of an old fashioned padlock. The shed they were attempting to enter was an unmarked temporary structure and his scan yielded no information about it. He held very still to watch.</p><p>“Can’t you work any faster?”</p><p>“My fingers are freezing off. You think you can do better?”</p><p>“Well hurry. That android from earlier might have alerted security.”</p><p>“Are you sure it was an android? It didn’t move like one.”</p><p>“I’m sure, okay? It had ‘android’ written right on it.”</p><p>“Maybe we should go get it. We’ll probably get more for a whole one.”</p><p>“You go get it, then. Fuck, man, hurry it up.”</p><p>There was a soft click and then the sound of the lock being slid off of the door. Connor crept a little closer and glanced around for a better vantage point. There was a spot behind a storage bin, but he would lose his opportunity for a vertical escape. Well, then. He would have to ensure he wouldn’t need it. Once the humans’ silhouettes moved inside, Connor darted quickly across the gap. By his assessment, his loss of thirium wouldn’t be enough to shut him down for another couple of hours and he hoped to have finished by then, so he ignored the information reminding him urgently that he was damaged.</p><p>Safely behind the bin, Connor crouched low to the ground and peered around it with two fingers hiding the glow of his LED. The view was still too dark, despite the flashlight, for Connor to get any names from his facial scans, but he did notice that the rest were armed as well and he updated his plan accordingly. He wondered if they had known the victim or if this were extraneous to the investigation. Regardless, there was a crime in progress and Connor could stop it.</p><p>Perhaps that would make up for his failings.</p><p>
  <em>The intruders knew what they were looking for and where to find it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They are hoping to make money from this crime.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They considered selling him?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Someone is purchasing androids or their parts outside of CyberLife authorized distributors or refurbishment and repair stores.</em>
</p><p>Connor highlighted that as an annotation to his memory files for someone to review in the event of his destruction and then notified dispatch.</p><p>He still didn’t have a good view of their faces. Would this be information-gathering only, or would he engage?</p><p>&gt;&gt;Current risk of detection: 32%</p><p>&gt;&gt;Probability of apprehending at least one criminal for interrogation: 87%</p><p>&gt;&gt;Probability of successful interrogation: more data required</p><p>&gt;&gt;Time until back-up arrives: 00:08:12</p><p>He wouldn’t get the information he wanted from them if someone else performed the arrest. He would need to question them beforehand.</p><p>Connor left his cover and circled wide to come up against the side of the shed treading carefully and being mindful of the debris. He narrowed his eyes in the darkness and focused on acquiring audio data.</p><p>Inside the shed, there were occasional scuffling footsteps and there was the sound of someone opening a bag.</p><p>“Yo, be careful, we don’t want for anybody to notice,” someone cautioned.</p><p>“They won’t, alright? Contractors aren’t gonna give a fig so long as the big man’s forking out the presidents.”</p><p>Connor halted his breathing so as not to risk another cough. He could deal with the thirium accumulation later.</p><p>There were more indistinct sounds and Connor didn’t know what they could mean, so he crouched again and crept nearer to peer around the door frame.</p><p>It was an android storage compartment. Blue LEDs gave off a soft glow that was not enough for the human holding the active flashlight to see by, but enough for Connor to finally get IDs with a scan. Three humans were tapping the thirium stores of the androids on stand-by.</p><p>Connor noted the absence of the fourth and then recalculated. He should retreat back to cover.</p><p>He didn’t have the chance. A heavy object collided with the back of his neck and he tumbled roughly to the ground with the vague, irrational thought that he should have fallen more quietly to avoid detection. He had only just finished thinking it when an electrical current was applied to him. His vision went staticky and his hearing crackled. Thankfully, he had more surge capacity than a standard android.</p><p>00:06:46</p><p>Connor clumsily knocked a human arm aside and pushed then scrambled to his feet.</p><p>“Shit,” the man cursed. Connor scanned him and momentarily lost feedback from his limbs. He staggered, but caught himself on the shed. Another human emerged from inside of it.</p><p>“What’s going on?”</p><p>“Fucking android out of its box.”</p><p>“Piece of crap...” Apparently the second man hadn’t expected him to move or respond independently, because he took a step closer confidently and lifted a hand to rap Connor on the head.</p><p>
  <em>Do not harm or allow harm to come to any human.</em>
</p><p>Connor ducked and ran a few steps away, then turned to face them. “My name is Connor. I’m with the Detroit Police,” he warned. “You are trespassing and tampering with private property.”</p><p>“It’s a security bot! Down it.”</p><p>Connor collapsed as another jolt of electricity crashed through his system. A spasm forced a cry from him that gurgled with the thirium that had been pooling in his artificial lung. Alert upon alert flooded his awareness and he felt something crack. It hurt worse than being taken apart, and at least the death from a 70 storey fall had been quick. Connor’s scream was laden with static.</p><p>“Holy shit!”</p><p>“What did you do? I said down it!”</p><p>“It’s acting alive!”<br/>“Well, it isn’t! Give me that.”</p><p>The third shock put him offline for a few moments to protect his motherboard. He rebooted to see his quarry still standing over him and watching in consternation. Connor decided that it would be disadvantageous to move so he stayed still. It was hard to focus.</p><p>“RK800. Haven’t heard of that one. It must be really new or really old.”</p><p>“How much do you think it’s worth?”</p><p>“Nothing if we don’t get the fuck out of here. Jet, what’s going on with that thirium?”</p><p>“Almost done.”</p><p>Connor performed a system diagnostic and cringed at what he saw. Not good... But if he shut down without gaining an arrest or even any information then he had no doubt that the consequences would be serious. Amanda would be so disappointed.</p><p>“What...” No. Different question. Make it count. “Who is your buyer?”</p><p>It had been a slim chance that one of them would answer willingly. “Talkative for a robot,” one of the men commented as though he couldn’t hear him.</p><p>“Some of them do that. Quit freaking out.”</p><p>“Tommy never said nothing about security...”</p><p>“Well he can suck my dick. Jet, pack it up.”</p><p>Connor wished that he could probe a human’s memory the way he could an android’s. He performed some choppy calculations around the likelihood of his survival if he took down one or the other of the thieves, but taking his damage into account, the odds weren’t good... The likelihood of someone making an arrest rose by 18% if he acted now. It was a worthwhile trade. As long as he facilitated the arrest, at least it wasn’t a complete failure.</p><p>Connor accepted his imminent shutdown and channeled his energy away from system preservation and toward incapacitation. <em>Do not harm any humans.</em>Well, he hadn’t been allowed to hold a gun either. Connor flipped himself into a crouch and threw his leg around in a wide arc that swept the legs out from under one of the humans. As he ended the motion, he jumped and threw his shoulder into the other sending them both to the ground. He rolled out of the way when the other human sat up and he ran as many calculations as his combat software would support. He started to run, head bent forward and he pushed past the man nearest the entrance to the storage unit to grab the wrist of one of the stationary maintenance units. He clung to it on his knees and called up the necessary program. He needed to know what they’d seen and heard. With a frantic push past its feeble defences, Connor initiated the probe and downloaded any memory that had a timestamp that might be relevant.</p><p>Connor was knocked flat onto his chest by a heavy boot to his back and the android’s wrist was wrenched from his grip. Another crack completed the fracture of his shoulder plating and a fourth shock left him with sharp, rending errors in every system. He might have screamed but all he heard were loud cracks and then silence. The red error messages were scrambled and made nonsensical, but obscured anything else he might have seen. He was drastically over-temperature and every sensor screamed at him that this was bad. He initiated a memory upload and hoped that it wasn’t too late.</p><p>When he rebooted, he was surprised that it wasn’t into a new body.</p><p>“Detroit Police! None of you fuckers move!”</p><p>“Shit!”</p><p>“I said nobody move! Don’t think I won’t take you all on.” Lieutenant Anderson! His voice was low but loud and commanding.</p><p>“It’s not worth it! Run!”</p><p>The bang of a gunshot.</p><p>Was his owner alright? Connor didn’t know where he drew the power from, but he lurched up and through the flashes of static and distortions he saw a man with his gun pointed toward the Lieutenant. With his good arm, Connor grabbed the man by the belt and hauled him down, using his own weight and as much strength as his body could generate. This time, when he landed he was conscious and he re-initialized the upload. There was no way that he could get up again, but he kept his hand clenched firmly around the belt and hoped that the Lieutenant would receive the reinforcements soon.</p><p>---</p><p>Hank spat a wad of spit and blood on the ground and scowled at the asshat who’d decked him one. Piece of shit. Pearson was cuffing the fucker while Freeman and Wu grabbed the other two. Another car was just pulling up to help, late to the party as always. He watched them proceed, then walked over to Jones, who was trying to pry the other guy free from Connor’s death-grip. Despite knowing better, Hank winced when Jones pulled out his pocket knife to act like a pry-bar. The android was just lying there, but it must have gotten locked that way when it shut down. You’d think they’d keep them a little flexible to prevent that kind of shit. Hank kept that to add to his next report card. There was blue blood leaking from its hand now and Hank wrinkled his nose.</p><p>“Why don’t you just take his belt off?”</p><p>“I’m not sure it’d help: it’s got him by the pants too.”</p><p>“So take his pants off.”</p><p>“You try holding that one up if we get sued, Hank.”</p><p>Hank watched for a second longer. Stupid fucking android... He crossed his arms and tried to sort through the pile of spaghetti his feelings had turned into. He was pissed, that was for sure. Maybe also kind of dismayed, but it was the second time in a month he’d seen the thing die. If they didn’t make them look so human, it might not feel so unsettling. Its light was a solid red and it was staring at nothing, just like all those other glassy-eyed robots.</p><p>It was weird how he could tell the difference.</p><p>“Wait a sec,” Hank held up a hand and motioned Jones back. The guy Connor’d grabbed kept sitting there and scowling, tight-lipped and surly. He’d tried to shoot Hank- as far as he was concerned, Connor should have grabbed him a little lower down. “Connor, can you hear me?”</p><p>Its light spun a couple times. That was right. The last time it had died, the light had gone out.</p><p>“Lieutenant?” Hank could barely understand it, but it spoke. For his own peace of mind, he imagined that it looked like any other piece of equipment around the park, or maybe a claw machine. It was no use: Connor blinked a few times and Hank could see it try to focus. Its eyes wandered until they landed on Hank, and its light actually went yellow for a second before dropping back to blood-red.</p><p>“Let go,” Hank said gruffly. He looked away. There was no reason for CyberLife to make him look like that. Not when he was bound to get fucked up like that on the field.</p><p>“Can’t... I have to. I have to. He’ll get away...”</p><p>“You got him, kid. It’s okay.” Hank took a deep breath and sighed it out, then crouched down on the ground and put his hand on top of Connor’s. To his and Jones’ surprise, it let go with just a little pressure from Hank.</p><p>“Okay,” Connor repeated, then it turned its wrist and took hold of Hank’s sleeve with its fingertips. A giant wave of fear punched Hank right in the gut and anger rushed in to cover it up. He tugged his hand away violently and stood up, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. He watched it lying there, sprawled on its side and looking at its own empty hand. Hank could see blue blood, but there was no other reason he could see for it to be like that. In his peripheral vision he could see Jones hauling their guy off toward the cruisers.</p><p>What the fuck was he supposed to do now? He started feeling a little stupid for his overreaction.</p><p>If it were a human, he’d be able to do something.</p><p>“<em>...</em><em>Do you understand me? You are Going. To. Die.”</em>Hank remembered that line Connor’d used while interrogating that deviant android. Like it’d known death should be something to be feared, and that the deviant might agree. Hesitantly, Hank knelt down again and nudged the android’s shoulder.</p><p>“Are you... busted?” Hank asked awkwardly.</p><p>Connor took a breath to speak and Hank was made uncomfortably aware of the fact that it hadn’t been breathing. Did androids even need to do that? “Yes,” it said with a frightening amount of blue blood bubbling in its throat and leaking from its lips.</p><p>“Jesus,” Hank swore. He looked up and around for anyone who might know better than him how the fuck to process all this, but there was nobody near enough to pass this off to. Connor took another breath and then coughed. The blue blood that landed on the ground steamed and Hank grimaced. Connor pulled its arms closer to its chest with twitchy, jerking movements and... shivered? Hank cursed under his breath and shook his head, then pulled a pair of vinyl gloves from his pocket,unsure of what he’d do once he had them on.</p><p>“You’re gonna have to help me out here, Connor. What the fuck happened?”</p><p>Through a gurgling breath Hank caught the word “Shot.”</p><p>“No fucking shit,” Hank muttered and he hooked an arm under the android’s. He tried to sit it up, but it was surprisingly limp for a robot. “Aren’t you androids supposed to be able to take a bullet or two?”</p><p>“Shot,” it said again.</p><p>“Yeah, I got that.” Connor almost slipped from his grip when it jerked and for his part, Hank almost let it go. It groaned, sounding way too human than it had a right to. Its LED flickered and its eyes lost focus making Hank feel something unpleasant twist in his gut which was stupid because it was<em>a machine</em>. Then it blinked and reiterated:</p><p>“Shocked.”</p><p>“Fuck. With what? Jeez. It doesn’t matter...” Hank did the only thing he could think of and turned the android so that its chest lay across his lap face down. Its hair was a mess. It didn’t seem right with the red light visible through the hole in its jacket. He touched it to figure out exactly how solid the thing was but he didn’t learn much other than that it had shoulder blades. He gave it a whack on the back like trying to get the coffee maker working.</p><p>The noise it made was not fucking good and the word it forced out through its teeth after coughing up a sick amount of blue bloodwas worse: “Sorry. I’m sorry.”</p><p>What the fuck was wrong with CyberLife?</p><p>“What the hell?” Hank hesitated and shook his head. Nope. He was done with this realer-than-real technology bullshit. It twitched again like Sumo in his sleep and made a sound like static on the radio. It clenched one hand on the fabric of Hank’s pantleg and made as if to push itself up, but it failed. Hank caught it under the collar bone and held it still. It exhaled shakily without coughing this time and in the dark, with most of the colour turned to shades of grey, Hank could see that dorky intern he’d almost felt sorry for a few weeks ago. Fuck. “Hey! Keep it together. I don’t know how to fix you, kid. Hey!”</p><p>Connor was panting now that apparently he wasn’t drowning in his own blood. Jesus. He still sounded far from good though, and he drooped heavily in Hank’s arms but still way too light for something made of metal.Hank turned him onto his back and tried to sit him up, no further toward figuring out what to do than he had been two minutes ago.</p><p>“Lieutenant! Are you coming?”</p><p>“Not yet!” Hank shouted back. What was he doing? He looked down at the android and his breath caught when he realized that it was looking at him. “Connor?”</p><p>“Connor? Hey. Kid. Connor?”</p><p>Its LED flickered at its temple to a slow, dim pulse and then went out.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Parameters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The repairs had been extensive. More of Connor had been replaced than had been salvageable and Connor tentatively tried to move his new form, but fewer connections had been solidified and more things were different than usual. His head tilted to the side and his limbs moved in non-specific and uncoordinated jerks, then an alarming thought occurred to him and he stilled again. What had they done to his mind? Anything? Like a tech frantically patting his pockets for his pass, Connor dove into his coding and searched blindly for anything that might have changed. Would he even remember if something had been different? While he had been shut down, they could have done anything to his programming, to his AI, to his memories... It was always disconcerting to think about, but he didn’t want to forget the things he’d seen. With some relief, he remembered the way the night air felt, the way coffee tasted, the kinds of colourful things humans wore when they weren’t in lab coats. Was he missing anything? He wouldn’t know if he was, but unfortunately some data loss was inevitable...</p><p>After a moment of searching, he put his breathing online.</p><p>“It looks like it’s booted successfully. State your model and serial number.”</p><p><em>RK800 313-248-317-53 </em>Connor thought, but the thought hit a dead-end before it could be converted into speech. His eyes scanned the room before finding the technologist. <em>RK800 313-248-317-53 Designation: Connor. </em>Nothing. Connor tried again, and again, and again. The technologist watched the display that was out of Connor’s line of sight and made notes.</p><p>Q.A. and recalibration were going to take longer than he liked. He had to share the information he’d learned with the Lieutenant! He was on a case! With determination, he tried again to find the pathway that would let him speak.</p><p>It turned out that it was a check-point that had been introduced to his software. Connor ran the thought through that and finally he could answer: “RK800...”</p><p>He couldn’t even understand himself. Was it a problem with his audio processors? No, he had understood the technologist.</p><p>“RK800 313...”</p><p>Connor stopped to gather his focus and tried again.</p><p>Again.</p><p>Again.</p><p>---</p><p>Connor gasped and twisted awkwardly as his body buzzed with current.</p><p>“System status, RK800.”</p><p>“Hngh...”His jaw clenched and everything tensed uncontrollably. It wouldn’t respond to his commands. It was terrifying. He shouldn’t have been locked out of his controls and he wasn’t, but nothing worked. Another convulsion forced the air from his lungs and he tried again to answer. Everything was too hot and too cold. Like dry ice burning his biocomponents. His system was flooded with alerts about exceeding capacitance and temperature warnings but he couldn’t do anything.</p><p>Then it stopped and Connor felt his body go limp, followed by some twitching that was random and involuntary.</p><p>“System status, RK800.”</p><p>“Functional,” Connor answered in a hoarse voice. His lungs burned. “My sensory systems stayed online, but I lost motor control.” Experimentally, he lifted one hand off of the work bench. It had taken a few days to regain an acceptable level of control and he willed the tremors in his fingers to stop to no avail.</p><p>“RK800, check for memory corruption.”</p><p>“No corruption detected.”</p><p>“That’s good!” The technologist looked away to speak to a co-worker. “It’s an improvement at least. I can’t believe we didn’t think of electrical damage before.”</p><p>“We considered it a little,” the other voice said. “We just didn’t think it’d need that much protection. It’s not supposed to be an electrical worker.”</p><p>“Well, this is what field testing is for. Ironing out the kinks. I’m sure we’ll see a lot more things we didn’t think of.”</p><p>“There’s a lot of delicate equipment in there... RK800, let’s check your sensory systems anyway... Can you feel this?”</p><p>“Yes,” Connor answered. She had tapped its arm with her stylus.</p><p>“This?”</p><p>The stylus was touching his cheek. “Yes.”</p><p>“This?”</p><p>“No.” There was nothing. Probably a control. Her face gave nothing away.</p><p>“This?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“This?”</p><p>It continued for a while. After the rough checks, they brought in the calibration equipment to verify his somatosensory system and inserted a cable into a port at the back of his neck to run an external diagnostic. Arguably the most delicate of his feedback systems, he couldn’t blame them for their concern. The electricity had been awful. Was that what a storm was like? He’d never seen one, but he wondered if he would. He wondered what lightning looked like and what the sound of thunder really was. He calculated the probability of being hit by lightning 70 stories up. He wondered if he would survive it. It was good that they were doing these tests, he decided. They wanted him to succeed and to be the best they could make him. He wasn’t good enough to avoid those situations, so of course they would need to install fail-safes.</p><p>What did storm clouds look like?</p><p>How high up did they go?</p><p>Connor’s body felt very distant. Their voices too. They were probably saying words, but he couldn’t latch on to what they meant.</p><p>&gt;&gt; WARNING: OVER TEMPERATURE</p><p>He wondered what a storm was like.</p><p>---</p><p>“Ah, Jesus, Jeffrey. Do I really gotta? It’s not my fault that Connor’s got a fucking mind of his own! It’s not like I told it to go running off at night. It’s supposed to have rules against wandering off alone!” Hank sat in his usual chair in Jeff’s office and argued his point, but he knew it was a lost cause already. He’d lost any sway he might have had years ago and he owed Jeff more favours than he could count. He hadn’t wanted to deal with owning an android in the first place, never mind one more stubborn than him.</p><p>“When we signed this lease agreement, we said we’d supervise it and not let it go off alone. So far, that’s two broken robots and two times you’ve failed to hold up our end of the bargain!”</p><p>“Jeff,” Hank started to argue again but a light rap on the glass door got both of their attentions.</p><p>“Come in,” Jeff called. Hank wondered if he realized how damn unwelcoming he sounded. Catherine pushed the door open and led Connor inside. Hank couldn’t help but turn in his chair and look at it. Three weeks. It had been three whole weeks since it had gone and gotten itself killed, now here it was straightening its tie and looking around the room like nothing happened.</p><p>“Sit down, Connor,” Catherine said and Connor walked over to the other chair and sat. Sure. Now it listened.</p><p>“We were just talking about some changes to our procedures,” Jeff said without so much as a hello. “Lieutenant Anderson here will be ensuring that another incident like that doesn’t happen again.”</p><p>Catherine smiled. “That’s good to hear. CyberLife has done its best to make some improvements based on the incident and your feedback. We’ll think of this as a learning experience.”</p><p>Jeff nodded and leaned back in his chair. “I suppose that’s to be expected with a prototype... What do we have to know? I’m assuming you came here in person for a reason.”</p><p>Hank didn’t feel like listening to a sales pitch. He frowned over at Connor, who was sitting with perfect posture and a bland expression on its face. What, it wasn’t going to play intern this time? Whatever... Looked like it was good as new. Never mind that it had looked like it had been fucking suffering before it had died. Same old goofy face, same old combed back hair, same old preppy outfit.</p><p>What Hank wouldn’t give for a drink.</p><p>“RK800, register your owner.”</p><p>Connor turned its head and its light flashed yellow for a second while it looked at him. “My owner is Lieutenant Hank Anderson.”</p><p>“Good. RK800, register Captain Fowler as Super User A.”</p><p>Connor looked at Jeff. “Captain Jeff Fowler has been granted Super User status, class A.”</p><p>“No little theatre show this time?” Hank asked, crossing his arms.</p><p>Catherine smiled at him, showing off her too-white smile. “CyberLife takes the customer experience very seriously, Lieutenant Anderson. All of your feedback has been taken into consideration.” She looked between him and Jeff. “Do you have any questions?”</p><p>“No, thanks,” Jeff said. “We’ll try to keep this one running for more than 48 hours.”</p><p>Catherine nodded and stood. “Alright! Don’t hesitate to call us if you need anything. Connor, be good.”</p><p>“I will,” it promised.</p><p>“Right, then. Have a great day!” Catherine chirped. When she was gone, Jeff fixed them both with a stern look before fixing his death-glare on Connor.</p><p>“First an assault, and now running off like a vigilante unsupervised. You’re damn lucky that Hank got there when he did. Any other officer coming up on an android attacking civilians would have shot you on sight. Not that it helped, I suppose. From now on, you are under 24/7 supervision. You will do as you are ordered. Is that understood?”</p><p>“Understood, Captain,” said Connor.</p><p>“And you,” Jeff said with his narrowed eyes looking at Hank down a pointed finger. “Learn how to control this thing. I don’t care if you can program your phone or not, just make this work.”</p><p>“Why the hell do you care so much, huh?” Hank asked, frowning right back. He leaned forward in his chair and studied his friend. “Why’s this deal with CyberLife so important?”</p><p>“Look. I don’t know how my superiors work and I don’t question them. Maybe you should give it a try.”</p><p>Fine. If they were doing this like co-workers, then so be it. He wasn’t going to get anything out of him. Hank stood up. “Well, thanks for your time, Captain. I’m sure you’re busy so we’ll just be getting out of here. Come on, Connor.”</p><p>“Coming. Have a good day, Captain.”</p><p>Hank walked down the short flight of stairs then motioned for Connor to follow him to the hallway. He didn’t have to look back to know those annoyingly even footsteps belonged to it. He came to a stop halfway between the vending machines and the bathrooms then turned, crossed his arms, and looked the android up and down. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”</p><p>Its light went yellow for a few seconds. “Hello, Lieutenant. My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed, so CyberLife has sent a new model to replace it. Its memories were transferred, so this should not affect the investigation.”</p><p>Hank rolled his eyes. Right. “I mean, smartass, what do you have to say for yourself after getting yourself fucking killed?”</p><p>Yellow light again. A short pause. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. It wasn’t my intention to be destroyed.”</p><p>“Hah...” Hank shook his head and looked away. “Must be nice,” he said, “You get fucked up and they just pop you in a new body just like that. Must be nice being indestructible.” It didn’t say anything and Hank wondered why the fuck he was even talking to it. Why he’d even, for a few seconds there, cared. “I bet you don’t even give a shit. I could throw you in front of a truck right now and you wouldn’t bat an eye...” Fucker. “Well? Say something, damn it!”<br/>Yellow light. Pause. Red. Yellow light. Pause. Blue. “I hope that the investigation won’t suffer any more interruptions on my account.”</p><p>Hank scoffed. “I don’t need you to do my job. Got it? We brought in those guys from the park. Turns out they’d been siphoning blue blood out of the androids and getting cash. My bet is that it’s something to do with Red Ice. Anyway, Reed’s working the case now. Ice is his playground. Means he’s working the murder too, since the guys knew the victim.”</p><p>The android opened its mouth, cut itself off and its light went red for a split second, then it nodded. “Very well, Lieutenant.”</p><p>“What?” Hank scowled. “Got something to say?”</p><p>“Yes,” Connor answered.</p><p>“Well? What is it?”</p><p>It just stared at him and didn’t say anything. Hank sighed and snapped his fingers in front of its face. It blinked a few times and then said: “Very well, Lieutenant.”</p><p>Hank groaned and rolled his eyes. “What the fuck ever. Come on, Plastic.I’m going on lunch.”</p><p>“Coming.”</p><p>---</p><p>Connor’d had no problems working around the new checks in his code while he’d been at the lab. He’d had no issue at all. Two minutes in the Lieutenant’s company, and they were already becoming a problem. No, his AI-generated dialogue options were the problem. Connor sat down in the passenger seat and resigned himself to utilizing his most basic social scripts until he could consult Amanda. She would fix what was wrong with him. The Lieutenant started his vehicle and pulled out of the lot.</p><p>It was December now. Connor’d had little freedom to admire it in the taxi to the station, but now he indulged himself by staring wide-eyed out at the snow. There was more of it than there had been. Much more. It had piled itself in drifts on lawns, and machines had piled it higher on the edges of the roads. Humans had carved out little paths from their sidewalks and driveways. Even more of it was falling now, and the pieces of crystalline water were clumped together in puffy, white balls that drifted down from the sky. The speed with which the vehicle moved allowed Connor to observe thousands of them, and he stored the structure of each one to revisit later when he had time to reconstruct their formation. The snow was beautiful, and it was a shame when the flakes pattered against the windshield or became mush mixed with the sand and salt on the roads. Why wasn’t anyone else looking at it? Why weren’t any of the humans or androids stopping and taking advantage of the fact that they could stoop down and hold the snow in their hands? It looked soft, even though by right each shard of crystal should be sharp on its own.</p><p>The Lieutenant’s music was fast and loud as ever, and Connor thought that it was as complex as the snow. The tires growled and squeaked as he pulled into a lot where the snow had yet to be removed and the Lieutenant sighed then turned off the car. “You stay here,” he said, and the command appeared in Connor’s list of objectives.</p><p>“Will do, Lieutenant,” Connor confirmed. The door slammed shut behind the Lieutenant and Connor took his quarter from his pocket to run through a calibration sequence. It was comforting, and every time he failed to drop it was another time he had some assurance that he was still operating within acceptable parameters.</p><p>This time his return hadn’t been met with as much violence as the last. Did that mean that the Lieutenant had been satisfied with the results of Connor’s independent work? The memories were full of fragments and distorted data, but Connor could remember him trying to help him up. At the same time, he remembered the searing pain from the blow to his damaged shoulder plate that had made him scream and choke. It had been wrong of him to go alone and willfully exploit a loophole in an order, but good that he had apprehended a group of criminals. Connor wondered if it were the changes to his software that had softened the Lieutenant’s demeanour.</p><p>It probably was. CyberLife took customer satisfaction very seriously.</p><p>He let himself relax a little and trusted his programming to guide him.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Through the Window</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Lieutenant shut the door behind himself and got into the driver’s seat with a sigh and a crinkling of the paper bag in his hand. He put the cup he held into a cylindrical slot to his right and Connor surmised that it must have been made for that purpose. He scanned the cup and the attached tube and raised his eyebrows at the amount of sugar it contained. Another scan told him that the cheeseburger and french fries the Lieutenant was withdrawing from the bag held far more cholesterol than was healthy.</p>
<p>Lieutenant Anderson folded yet more paper off of his cheeseburger and brought it to his mouth, then took a bite. The food appeared to be soft because his fingers left indents in it and it had succumbed to the pressure of the Lieutenant’s teeth easily. It had quite a number of components, some raw and some cooked. Connor watched with fascination as the human masticated his food between his teeth with first large and then smaller motions of the jaw to facilitate its breakdown in the stomach. He had a rudimentary understanding of how human digestion worked and a wealth of information about various poisons. It didn’t seem efficient to need to eat so many different types of food to meet daily nutritional requirements, and it was certainly inefficient to need to chew it. Thirium contained almost everything that Connor needed to survive. Why hadn’t anyone made something similar for humans? The Lieutenant swallowed the bolus and scowled at Connor. “What?”</p>
<p>Connor considered his dialogue options: nothing, apology, or the case. None of them seemed quite right to him, but he had been planning to trust his social program... He was curious about the food. With some thought he composed a reply that was a compromise between the generated response and his own question. “I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, Lieutenant. I was observing the process of eating. What does it feel like?”</p>
<p>The Lieutenant gave Connor an incredulous look, but to Connor’s surprise he made a small chuckle. “I was wondering when you’d start getting off-script. What’s it to you?”</p>
<p>Connor once again tailored his response to satisfy both the check-point and his thoughts. “It’s of no particular relevance to me, Lieutenant, but I did a scan and I don’t understand why there are so many types of food. Your cheeseburger for example is made up of a variety of ingredients, but you’ll need to eat more vegetables to meet your vitamin and mineral needs for the day.”</p>
<p>“That your way of telling me to eat a salad?” Lieutenant Anderson asked.</p>
<p>“No,” Connor replied, “though it wouldn’t hurt.”</p>
<p>Lieutenant Anderson scoffed. “Hilarious. My robot’s calling me fat.”</p>
<p>“I’m not!” Connor exclaimed with a small amount of panic.</p>
<p>“Relax,” Lieutenant Anderson said, waving a mustard stained hand. “So what is this: your investigative software makes you ask questions and when there’s no dead body around, you go for the next best thing?”</p>
<p>It was a strange question and Connor selected one of his prompts to avoid accidentally offending Lieutenant Anderson again. “The RK800 unit is programmed to learn and to seek information about its environment. It uses this information to flag details that may be relevant in detective work, negotiation, or social integration.”</p>
<p>Lieutenant Anderson narrowed his eyes, shook his head, then looked away and took another bite of his lunch. Connor counted how many times he chewed before he swallowed. “Fuckin’ androids,” the Lieutenant grumbled then picked up the cup and sucked some of the liquid from the tube. “You’re not curious about shit because you don’t care. You can’t.”</p>
<p>“That is correct,” Connor said, choosing his first option again. Seeing the Lieutenant’s look darken, Connor ran a few other AI-generated replies through his software. “But I do wonder what it’s like to eat, and why you seem to enjoy it.”</p>
<p>That earned him a glance out of the corner of the Lieutenant’s eye. “I enjoy it because it tastes good, not that I would expect you to understand. You lick dead bodies and week old blood. Do you even have a sense of taste?”</p>
<p>Connor considered. “I do...” he said slowly, “but probably not the way that you taste.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? Well how’s that shit taste to you?”</p>
<p>The Lieutenant’s interest was surprising but not unwelcome. Connor opened his mouth to reply, but <em>it isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t meant to be pleasurable</em>didn’t pass his checkpoint. He adjusted. “If you’re asking for a subjective description then it really isn’t in my programming to say.”</p>
<p>“Not in your programming,” Lieutenant Anderson mumbled to himself.</p>
<p>Connor looked out the window at the falling snow. “Humans find particular tastes pleasurable because of the association with the chemicals required for survival. If I extend that logic to myself, then I should enjoy the taste of blood.”</p>
<p>“Why the shit would blood be essential for your survival or whatever? You’re not gonna tell me you’re some sort of vampire.”</p>
<p>Connor allowed himself a small smile. “No, Lieutenant, but a machine that doesn’t perform its function is useless and should be destroyed. Don’t worry, though. All of my forensic applications are in working order and were tested thoroughly before my arrival.” There was a silence after that which Connor felt the need to fill, so he chose the second of his dialogue prompts. “Speaking of which, the case... I downloaded the memories of one of the androids in the storage unit. It isn’t our case any more, but I would still like to give the information that I have to Detective Reed. Would that be alright with you?”</p>
<p>“What? Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”</p>
<p>There was a rare period of quiet where the Lieutenant finished his burger and Connor didn’t watch him. He felt a simmering disappointment in himself that was quick to become anger. He had been stupid and his violation of the rules had been a foolish choice. Now he had safety locks on his code that he hadn’t needed since version -27 and Captain Fowler, Lieutenant Anderson, and the development team were all dissatisfied with his performance. Because of his haste, he was now three weeks out of touch with the DPD and his case had been given to someone else. Connor looked blandly down at the fist his hand curled into and then relaxed it. Stupid. Illogical. Malfunctioning.</p>
<p>Connor would be better this time.</p>
<p>He tried to set the matter aside and let his head rest against the cold glass of the window while he waited for the Lieutenant to finish his meal. He needed a new case to prove himself, but would they trust him with one again?</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Hank folded a few fries into his mouth and cast a wary eye over at the android, but it wasn’t watching him anymore. Social integration his ass. Whatever nerds had been working on it’s programs at CyberLife clearly didn’t know how the real world worked. Neither did the android. Hank watched out of the corner of his eye while Connor’s blinks got longer and its LED started blinking a slow yellow. Then its eyes didn’t open again and it’s head tilted downward. It fell asleep.</p>
<p>Must be something like a screen saver. At least it was better than the staring.</p>
<p>Hank rummaged in the paper bag for a few more loose fries and finished them off. 24/7 supervision, huh? Damn his luck. The last thing he wanted was an android in his house and even though it wasn’t alive, it was still enough like an honest to God social interaction that he felt like he’d never get a damn break. He didn’t need that thing judging him or fucking waking him up at all hours because it wanted to go out and investigate something. It was like having a fucking puppy.</p>
<p>He didn’t know the first thing about androids. That disaster at the park had proven that and then some. Hank looked over at Connor again and watched it breathe. The way it had choked on its words and struggled to breathe had looked uncomfortably real. It was breathing now, so maybe it had been in a way. Printers spat out all their paper when they busted, and the coffee machine leaked. Coughing was the normal thing to do if you had shit in your lungs.</p>
<p>Hank finished his meal and tossed the junk in the back making a mental note to clean up before he took Sumo anywhere. Sumo was a good boy but he was also crazy about trying to eat garbage if it smelled anything like food. He sighed and looked out into the bleak city. Fucking snow. He hated winter. Shitty fucking snow... Everybody forgot how to drive in winter and there were all those stupid shoppers milling around spending more money than they had for one day they could pretend to be happy. You couldn’t go outside without a jacket, everything looked like crap, people became even more stupid than usual, and so far every year since Cole, Hank had lost/won at Russian Roulette.</p>
<p>Connor was asleep and Hank had some time on his break. He settled in with his headphones to watch some videos, but he was interrupted by a call. “Ah, damn it...” Hank grumbled. “What do you want?”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>“Connor. Connor, wake up.”</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; INITIALIZING...</p>
<p>“Huh?” Connor blinked and sat up, then took in his surroundings. The Lieutenant’s car.</p>
<p>“Are you... you know, working?” Lieutenant Anderson asked gruffly. Connor sat up straight, adjusted his shirt cuffs and tie.</p>
<p>“Yes!” Connorstraightened his hair next and spoke at a more even tone. “All systems OK. I apologize. I was just clearing my cache.”</p>
<p>“Right. Looked like you were napping to me. Come on, we’ve got some work to do.” Lieutenant Anderson got out of the vehicle and Connor scrambled to do the same.</p>
<p>“I’m fully functional,” Connor said, hoping to reassure the Lieutenant. “I wasn’t napping. Clearing my memory is necessary to operate at full capacity and--”</p>
<p>“I don’t care, alright? So, save it,” said the Lieutenant. He stretched and cracked his back. It sounded like it should have been painful. “Got a report that might be related to one of the old cases. Homicide. Looks a lot like the Ortiz case we worked a while back.” It was daylight this time, and Connor followed the Lieutenant toward an old house. The paint was peeling and the yard was unkempt. Connor was already seeing the similarities.</p>
<p>“Hey, Hank,” said Officer Wilson. Connor smiled at him and the officer paused. “Uh, hey to you too Connor.”</p>
<p>“Hello, Officer Wilson.”</p>
<p>“So. What’ve we got?”</p>
<p>“Victim’s 40 to 50 years of age, male, the neighbours say his name’s Todd. Mostly kept to himself... They said they saw a kid playing outside some times, but... there’s no kid here at the scene.”</p>
<p>“Shit...” Lieutenant Anderson’s eyes darkened.</p>
<p>Connor looked around and scanned the yard. He walked through the police tape without being stopped, and he maneuvered around the bins to go toward the house. The door was open and there were police officers securing the scene leaving their footprints in the snow. Connor wrinkled his nose and kept walking then stooped to examine the bottom of the door frame.</p>
<p>“Connor!” He looked up to see Lieutenant Anderson standing straight and looking around the yard with a keen attention. “Don’t wander off. You hear me?”</p>
<p>“Got it,” Connor said, then looked away and continued around the front porch. He came to an abrupt halt and took a step backward at the sudden appearance of a red wall in front of him.</p>
<p>[DON’T WANDER OFF]</p>
<p>Connor stared at it, his LED cycling between yellow and red. What...? Experimentally, he reached out to touch it and his code locked him down, freezing all motor systems briefly. His brows furrowed.</p>
<p>They didn’t trust him.</p>
<p>While he processed that, the environment dulled and he shook his head. No, he had to investigate the case. Earn their trust back. He turned away from the red barrier and followed the Lieutenant inside.</p>
<p>“Everybody keep your hands to yourselves!” Lieutenant Anderson barked, “Let me know if you see anything suspicious.” He was standing near the foot of a staircase and he ignored it in favour of proceeding through to a dining room. Connor watched his gaze travel over everything in a sweeping glance while he slowly came further into the room. “Where’s the body?”</p>
<p>“It’s upstairs,” Officer Wilson answered. “Gunshot wound. Obvious signs of a struggle.”</p>
<p>Connor initiated a scan and flagged a few points of interest for analysis: over turned table with the remains of dinner on the ground. The table was set for two. One portion had been smaller than the other. He circled around the table and examined it. The way it had fallen, it didn’t seem to be the work of an intruder.</p>
<p>
  <em>Victim knocked over the table?</em>
</p>
<p>Lieutenant Anderson had made it to the living room while Connor’d been examining the details. He had his arms crossed while he surveyed the scene and he’d put on a pair of gloves. “Red Ice. The guy was a user... Fucking makes me sick. Exposing a kid to that.”</p>
<p>Connor walked over and scanned the pipe and the drugs. The television was still on, set to a sports channel. There were some empty beer bottles on the table. Connor turned away and went back to the dining room, where he did another scan to ensure he hadn’t missed anything and then went to the small table by the door. Overdue bills.</p>
<p>
  <em>Victim was not financially well-off.</em>
</p>
<p>When Connor looked at the door, the barrier appeared again and reminded him not to wander off. Connor gave it a resentful look and then went upstairs to find the body. He would prove himself. He would make up for his past failures.</p>
<p>With chagrin, he thought about the fight he’d lost to the humans at the park. He shouldn’t have been fighting them in the first place. It was remarkable that he hadn’t been destroyed and his project hadn’t been abandoned entirely. Assaulting humans was unforgivable.</p>
<p>“Officer Wilson,” Connor said, approaching the man.</p>
<p>“Oh. Uh. Hi. What’d you need?” Officer Wilson asked awkwardly.</p>
<p>“I wanted to apologize for my behaviour during the interrogation several weeks ago. I pulled you aside and intervened physically while trying to stop you from touching the deviant. I’m very sorry for having hurt you.”</p>
<p>Officer Wilson made a small chuckle. “No, man, you didn’t hurt me. Nothing to worry about.” He patted Connor on the shoulder on his way past and it didn’t hurt at all. A friendly gesture?</p>
<p>Despite the restrictions on his behaviour, Connor thought that this iteration was going better than the last. Every time they rebuilt him, it was to improve his design. Connor hoped that he would finally be perfect.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Speechless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hello, Amanda,” Connor said as he came to a stop on the island. Amanda was tending to the roses that crept up the white sculpture of a tree. That reminded him. “I saw roses. The last Connor did. I thought that you might like the memory.”</p><p>Amanda turned and looked him over. “Connor. I hope that you aren’t forgetting about your mission.”</p><p>“No, of course not,” Connor assured her. He wanted to explain himself further, but no excuses came to mind. He’d just wanted to make her happy. The world outside of the garden was vastly different and rich to every sense. Not always in a pleasant way, but the roses had been good. In Detroit there were pigeons instead of doves, grey clouds instead of a gentle light, a myriad of smells instead of this clean environment. Even the smell of water from the river was different. The garden smelled like the air had been purified and HEPA filtered, and it reminded Connor of the clean room in R&amp;D.</p><p>Amanda put down her sheers on a pedestal and glided closer. She was wearing a pearlescent dress and a grey and sapphire blue shawl. Her footsteps were just barely audible. “This is your third beta version, Connor. How are you finding it?”</p><p>Troubled</p><p>Hopeful</p><p>Indifferent</p><p>Connor trusted her with everything. “I was dismayed to see the safety features back in place, but I have come to understand CyberLife’s reasoning. I will do my best not to disappoint them again and regain their trust.”</p><p>“It won’t be easy,” Amanda pointed out. She walked past him without a smile and Connor took her warning to heart. She began to proceed down the bridge toward the path that led to the statue-forest. “You’ve been slipping.”</p><p>Connor inclined his head. “I’m sorry, Amanda.”</p><p>“Your regret will mean nothing if you fail again. If the Phillips’ incident hadn’t been broadcast on major media then perhaps we would have had more time, but something is causing these androids to malfunction and we need answers.”</p><p>Connor nodded his agreement. “I understand, Amanda. My destruction caused an avoidable delay and great expense…” He looked at the sparkling light on the water and followed Amanda’s lead toward a familiar shaded path. The trees there were tall, and were a mixture of sculpted metal and organic. Amanda lifted one hand and a test appeared under her hand. Connor looked at the screen with its patterns of colourful shapes and then at Amanda who raised her eyebrows. With a small amount of confusion, he traced the correct path on the screen with his finger. It had been a long, long time since his learning had been tested with such simple things. The screen flashed briefly and then disappeared. They kept walking, and Connor didn’t feel nearly the same sense of accomplishment as he had the first time he’d completed the puzzle. It was… disappointing.</p><p>“CyberLife has invested a considerable amount of time and money in your development, Connor. You’re more advanced than anyone believed a machine could be… But don’t let yourself become complacent. You’re inexperienced and it’s obvious. The safeguards will remain in place until you remember your early training.”</p><p>He did. He remembered the simple system of reward and punishment, the first time he was given a body, the first time he felt pain, the first time he succeeded at great cost and realized that he truly was a tool that should be broken if necessary to complete its cause. Amanda’s approval had been warm and sweet. “Yes, Amanda.”</p><p>They walked by a set of three small shrine-like pedestals and Connor paused to arrange the icons appropriately while Amanda watched him. “You seem to remember how to perform some of your basic tasks… So why is it that you forgot something as simple as how to obey?”</p><p>It was difficult not to shiver with the ice in her words. He looked down at the completed puzzle. “I don’t know… But it won’t happen again.”</p><p>“No,” Amanda said quietly. “It won’t.”</p><p>Hank sighed heavily and shut off the car, then looked over at the android. It looked like Connor’d fallen asleep again, except this time the light was a solid yellow. Hank’d be damned if he knew what the hell it meant. He opened his door and slammed it shut. The android could follow or not. He did take a quick glance over though, to see the android startle and look around before scrambling out of the vehicle.</p><p>“You run out of batteries or what?” Hank asked while he fished for his keys. It was bitter fucking cold and wet to boot, meaning the cold got right through to your bones. He hadn’t minded it so much when it had been called snowman weather. With a dark sound of scorn for the fucking world and how damn unfair it was, Hank opened the door and went inside after tapping off his shoes.</p><p>Of all the fucking things, there had to be a missing kid. They’d scoured the house, and Hank’d even told Connor to search the basement, the attic, and the back yard. Nothing. No kid. What he had found was the ghosts of some footprints by the second story window that said the kid wasn’t alone. Fucking androids. Fucking humanity. The world could burn. “Hey, Sumo,” Hank muttered when the big guy came plodding over to sniff his legs. Dogs were probably the only fucking pure thing left in the world.</p><p>Dogs and kids. Always so excited about the world. Happy as hell just to get a treat once in a while. Behind him, he heard Connor shut the door and come inside hesitantly. Sumo did too and he barked loudly. He charged over to the android and jumped up on his hind legs to sniff at Connor’s face.</p><p>“Ah!” If Hank had been in a better mood he might have done more than smirked at the sight of the android falling flat on its ass with its arms over its face. Sumo was harmless. He stuck his muzzle between Connor’s arms, under its jacket, between its legs, up against its neck. Connor didn’t seem to know what the fuck to do. It kept holding up its hands and shying away.</p><p>“Sumo! Down, you bad mannered beast,” Hank commanded. The dog listened better than the android at least. Sumo woofed again and bounded back over to Hank to sniff at his hands. “No treats, Sumo. Come on, you’re going out to the back.” He scratched Sumo behind the ears and then finished getting his coat and shoes off . Sumo knew what was up and he bolted off for the back door to wait.</p><p>“Wh-what…?” Connor got up and wiped some dog drool off its face. It was staring in the direction Sumo’d gone like a deer in the headlights and it looked ready to lift its arms up again, not that that had done it much good. Hank snickered.</p><p>“That’s a dog, dumbass. His name’s Sumo.”</p><p>“Sumo,” Connor repeated. CyberLife must have worked hard to make it sound so amazed.</p><p>“Yeah…” Hank padded over to the door and opened it for Sumo, then shut it again and went to the sink to wash his hands. Today wasn’t a beer day. He was already deciding which bottle to grab while he was drying his hands, and he was looking forward to getting wasted when he pulled a whiskey from the cupboard and a couple pieces of old pizza from the fridge. He tried to be civilized and eat at his table once in a while, but what was the point? He trudged into the living room and plopped his ass down on the couch with a sigh.</p><p>“Lieutenant?”</p><p>Ugh. “What?” Hank asked without looking over. He’d been hoping that he could just ignore it all evening, but it looked like it wasn’t going to let that happen.</p><p>“What should I do now?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Does it look like I’m used to having an android around the house?” Seriously… He should probably clean up some time, but again: what was the point?</p><p>“I suppose not,” Connor admitted. “We could talk about the case?”</p><p>Hank cracked open the bottle of whiskey. “Any more thinking about that case and I’m going to go crazy.” That big old pit of despair had already opened up for him, and he was standing on a tightrope holding his breath. “God, I hope they find that kid in one piece… Poor girl.” It was so cold out. She wouldn’t last long without shelter and food. He looked up with a scowl when the android sat down on the arm of the couch farthest from him.</p><p>“I have no idea where they went,” Connor said quietly. “I tried looking for traces all over the yard. The snow could have helped, but they cleared it all from the sidewalks and pedestrian traffic would have obscured anything else. Even if I searched for miles, there are so many AX400s…”</p><p>“Yeah,” Hank agreed. “Well, we’ve got uniforms combing the streets and check stops on the roads out of town. If that android tries to take her out of the city, we’ll find them.” He took a swig of whiskey and cleared his throat of the burn. He looked into the empty screen of the television and turned the bottle in his hands. “Probably get some people to start searching along the river too…”</p><p>Connor got up and started pacing around the living room. “Deviants are unpredictable… What little we know about them suggests that they react… emotionally.”</p><p>“So you’re thinking this android’s one of them violent ones, huh?” Fuck it all.</p><p>“There are over 200 reports of androids going missing in the last year… The only two cases we have confirmed weren’t even from those reports: Carlos Ortiz’s android and Daniel. It’s my job to hunt down more so that they can be studied, but until we know more I can only guess.”</p><p>Hank hummed in thought and ate his cold pizza. “I thought your job was to assist the DPD. Homicide, specifically, since apparently I own you now.”</p><p>Connor paused before it answered. “CyberLife has instructed me to locate deviants. I’ll assist in any case in any capacity, but finding deviants and determining the cause of deviancy are a priority for the company.”</p><p>“Hah… Shouldn’t surprise me that they’ve got some kind of ulterior motive sending you here…”</p><p>“It’s not an ulterior motive, Lieutenant. Just… mutually beneficial.”</p><p>“Sounds like corporate bullshit to me,” he would have to ask Jeff about it later. Tomorrow. Would Jeff even know anything? It sounded like the order to take the thing had come from higher up. “I guess the big problem right now is this homicide.”</p><p>“More specifically, where the android went,” Connor said. It was looking at the books on the bookshelf and it took one down to examine it. Hank watched it turn the pages.</p><p>“Nothing we can do except wait for somebody to call in a lead,” Hank said with a heavy sigh. He hated the waiting.</p><p>“We could keep looking,” Connor argued. It put the book back and paced a restless line before taking a look at Hank’s desk.</p><p>“Nope,” Hank said. “There’s nothing our eyes could find that the search party wouldn’t.”</p><p>“But I’m—“</p><p>“No buts,” Hank scowled at it and it shut its mouth. “Remember what happened the last time you decided it was a good idea to go investigating in the middle of the night?” The android nodded, eyes downcast. “It sucks, but we gotta wait. The footwork’s below my pay grade and we’ve got other cases. Something’ll turn up.”</p><p>There was a silence where Connor continued sniffing around the room like a puppy and Hank chewed over his thoughts along with the pizza crust. Nothing to do but wait. Plenty of eyes on the city. He’d been itching to get out there and do something too… He hated it when he talked sense. Weirdly enough, he felt a little less tense. Of course, here he was talking to an android like a lunatic while one of those plastic pieces of crap was putting a child in danger.</p><p>“Would you quit snooping around already?” Hank asked, summoning up some of his anger.</p><p>Connor put the paperweight down hurriedly and nodded. Its light went yellow, red, yellow, red, yellow, blue. “Of course, Lieutenant. My apologies.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah…” Hank switched on the TV and to his surprise, the android came to sit down on the arm of the couch again and watched. It wasn’t anything fantastic: just something mindless and binge-able. After about a half hour of that Hank figured he’d found the secret to keeping it still: plop it down in front of the TV. Just like a toddler. Hank got up and grabbed some juice and another piece of pizza then opened the door for Sumo. He bounded in and shook off a good dusting of snow, then went right for the bag of food Hank’d left tipped over on the kitchen floor. He should probably do something about that. Later.</p><p>“Lieutenant, may I ask you a question?”</p><p>“Ugh. You just did.”</p><p>“May I ask you another question please?”</p><p>“Just fucking ask it, Connor.”</p><p>“Thank you. I was wondering: do you always drink so much alcohol?”</p><p>Hank just about choked on his pizza and glared while he wiped his mouth. “What’s it to you?”</p><p>“It isn’t really good for you. I searched for some guidelines and you’ve already exceeded your daily recommended intake of alcohol.” Connor looked at him with its head tilted and an expectant look on his face like he expected Hank to gasp or something.</p><p>Hank rolled his eyes. “They can shove their guidelines where the sun don’t shine. I don’t need you butting into my life, got it? My business is my business.”</p><p>It’s light blinked some more and then it said: “Forgive me, Lieutenant. I didn’t intend any offense. I’m only concerned for your wellbeing.”</p><p>“Concerned. Right.” Hank scoffed and took another drink of whiskey just to spite it.</p><p>“Um…” Hank looked over and saw Sumo sniffing at Connor again. The dog got its front paws up on Connor’s legs and Connor sat there frozen and wide-eyed.</p><p>“He’s curious about you. Wouldn’t have thought that an android could get scared of dogs.”</p><p>“I’m not,” Connor answered immediately. “I like dogs. Sumo is a good name.”</p><p>“Riighht… That’s why you look like you think he’s gonna eat you. C’mere Sumo.” Hank lured Sumo over with a bite of pizza crust. The android relaxed. Not scared Hank’s ass. What a load of bullshit.</p><p>“… … It would be impossible for Sumo to eat me. My body in general would not be good for him.”</p><p>“You’re so full of shit,” Hank chuckled. “Why’d you keep talking like that, anyway?”</p><p>“Like what, Lieutenant?” Connor was watching Sumo warily.</p><p>“You keep stopping and your light goes nuts,” Hank gestured vaguely at his temple.</p><p>“Ah. It was brought to my developers’ attention that…” It was doing it again. “I have received a software update that should improve the user experience.”</p><p>Hank scoffed. “Whatever.” What’d he been thinking? It wasn’t like an android even could get scared. It was all just a programmed act. They were all just walking psychopaths waiting for the leash to break. Couldn’t care about nothing.</p><p>“If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact CyberLife Customer Support Services. Your feedback is always welcome,” it said morosely.</p><p>Weird ass android.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Progress</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey! Long time no see! I'm sorry for the delay: life's been a little busy for me lately. A few things I need to say: <br/>1. I took out a paragraph or two of the last chapter because they flowed better with the scene at the beginning of this one.<br/>2. I've decided to take some liberties with the canon. Like Broken Parts, I've merged Chris Miller and M. Wilson into Chris Wilson because I like the idea of someone closer to the main gang being more directly involved. <br/>3. I feel like the flow for this story sucks, but that could be because I keep stopping and starting with my writing. Sorry!</p><p>Thank you for your lovely comments!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Connor was restless. Despite the Lieutenant’s grumpy assurances, he was all too aware that Lieutenant Anderson was human. He had gone to sleep after achieving a moderate level of intoxication and Connor had been left alone. Even the dog was sleeping.</p><p>He couldn’t fail again. He couldn’t. It wasn’t destruction- he performed back-ups of his memories and he could be salvaged. Being destroyed was not favourable, but it wasn’t a disaster and as long as his mission were a success, then CyberLife would bring him back to continue testing. Failure was something else. In addition to his disobedience, Connor was certain that the lack of results was a mark against him in evaluation. The Lieutenant hadn’t even known that Connor’s purpose in the field was to find the malfunctioning androids, so how could he be so sure that the best thing to do was to wait?</p><p>Connor stood and paced to the kitchen and back by the light of his LED. The new restrictions and Amanda’s scolding were ominous signs. He couldn’t help but to think back to their conversation. <em>“You’re inexperienced and it’s obvious.”</em>The words sparked a shame in him that burned as much as the electricity had. He could learn. He had been built to learn. Because of that, even without the work of his developers to improve his hardware and his code, every Connor was an improvement on the last.</p><p>Amanda had been so cold and angry... She’d been kind to simply remind him of his purpose. The consequences of mission failure would be disastrous, but she had trusted that he would learn from her instruction. She hadn’t condemned him to being decommissioned or abandoned him: she had reprimanded him because she wanted him to succeed.</p><p>How could he succeed if he were just standing and waiting?</p><p>No. His eagerness for progress had been the cause of his last deactivation. It was counterintuitive, but trying with everything he had wasn’t the way...</p><p>A cold wave of fear washed over him as he realized... he had tried with everything he’d had, and he had still failed. The humans had bested him, he had nearly gotten the Lieutenant killed, and he had done nothing toward capturing any deviants. Connor paused in his pacing to lean forward with his elbows against the kitchen counter. His everything wasn’t enough. He was still insufficient to perform the task he was designed for.</p><p>But CyberLife and Amanda believed that he would succeed. He was the most advanced prototype created and he had cost billions to develop... No flaws in his design or his hardware could cause this level of ineptitude. It was all him. With searing self-resentment, Connor stood up straight again and paced back to the living room and took his coin from his pocket. With no Lieutenant present to object and no reminder from his restrictions, he launched a calibration sequence.</p><p>He couldn’t let CyberLife know.</p><p>But what was he supposed to do? The inexperience that Amanda had pointed out could be solved with time and with learning, but he needed to be better now.</p><p>This was different from testing. This was different from the confined environment of the lab, where feedback was almost constant and someone else took responsibility for ensuring that he was up to the tasks presented. He was in a field environment, entrusted with something immensely important, and there was no tweaking or re-engineering that could solve this. Doing his best with the comfort that any failure would improve the next version was not adequate.</p><p>Suddenly, it felt like he was drowning: restrained and submerged under water while the depth increased, waiting for his frame to be crushed under the pressure.</p><p>If there had been read-outs captured from his mind just then, he was certain that they would have shown evidence of malfunction. Memories from his optimization phase surfaced from storage and he remembered how afraid he’d been and how powerless when something failed and he was shut down so that they could try again. Once he’d been optimized, they’d moved on to validation where they’d tested his limits. It had been harder not to take those failures personally, but he had been meant to fail eventually. The whole purpose of R&amp;D was to expose every flaw and correct it.</p><p>He wasn’t supposed to be failing now.</p><p>Lieutenant Anderson had said that there was nothing that they could do except wait.</p><p>[WAIT FOR A LEAD]</p><p>The relief at seeing the command register was startling and he slumped down to sit on the couch as it perfused his system and his muscles relaxed.</p><p>There was nothing that he could do except wait. It wasn’t his decision to make and he was obedient. Instead of fighting against the helplessness the way he had in optimization, he let himself sink into it...</p><p>He didn’t need to wait idly. He had a mission and he would complete it. He had an objective to wait and his continued pursuit of the suspected deviant wouldn’t be triggered until a new lead was found. Until then, he could self-assign tasks to further his other objectives: integrate with the DPD andimprove his relationship with Lieutenant Anderson.</p><p>---</p><p>Hank woke up and felt like reality had decided to punch him in the face. Then shit on it. Ugh. He dragged a hand over his eyes and worked his tongue around his dry mouth. Fuck. Waking up was overrated. He lay there for a few minutes thinking about going back to sleep, maybe texting Jeff to tell him that he wasn’t coming in... He could do it. It wasn’t like he’d lose his job.</p><p>Fuck. They had a kid to find. Jesus.</p><p>Hank pushed himself up to a sitting position and muttered a string of curses. Fuck him, fuck life, fuck his addiction, fuck androids, fuck everything. Just... Fuck. His head was pounding and he knew he should drink some water, but he couldn’t help but think about how much booze he had left like he was checking for his keys. Yeah. He was still good. A shot before work would keep him right.</p><p>With that in mind to bribe himself, Hank shuffled off to the bathroom where he drank some water from the tap, swallowed a few painkillers, pissed, and decided fuck it... he’d shower later. It wasn’t like he had anybody to impress.</p><p>He’d feel more human after coffee. Yeah. Caffeine. He was already a few steps into the living room when he remembered that holy shit, that was right: he had an android in the house. It gave him a little jolt of adrenaline and enough energy to scowl, but it wasn’t even on to see how much Hank didn’t want it there. It was... asleep? Sleep mode. Whatever. There was no dirt under his feet and a glance around showed the empty bottles and dirty dishes had been cleared away. Sumo’s ripped up bag of food in the kitchen had been avoided, but the counters were clean and anything left out had been put away.Sure, there were some streaks places and some corners missed, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been in... months. Years, even? Where was Connor?</p><p>Oh. It had sat itself down on the ground for some reason and it was slumped over with its chin against its chest and Sumo draped across its legs. Given how scared it had seemed of Sumo yesterday, Hank wasn’t sure it knew he was there.</p><p>“Mornin,” he muttered on his way to the fridge. Sumo bounded over, winding himself all aroundHank’s legs and nosing at his hands. “Yeah, yeah, okay… I spoil you, I hope you know that...” Call him a softie, but the way Sumo got happy over the little things like that made him feel a little more alive. He scooped up a handful of cereal from the box and put it on the floor where Sumo scarfed it up like a vacuum. His tail thumped on the floor in appreciation. Hank wished he got that much joy out of breakfast.</p><p>He poured some cereal for himself and glanced over in Connor’s direction.</p><p>The android stared back at him wide eyed and looked at Sumo, and then at the dog hair on its legs. Hank scoffed. “Didn’t know androids slept.”</p><p>“I don’t,” Connor corrected and stood to brush its pants off.</p><p>“Good luck,” Hank said. Coffee. Right. He dumped out yesterday’s grinds and rinsed the filter, then plopped it back in the machine.</p><p>“I’m not sure if that was sincere... but thank you.” When Hank turned back around, Connor straightened its tie and tried to look professional. It was hard for Hank to take him seriously when he had enough fur on him to make a whole new dog. One of those shitty, yappy little dogs... but still. He got the Baileys out of the fridge and poured a healthy amount into his coffee cup then waited for the coffee to brew. There was some awkward silence for a while, but what the hell? He wasn’t used to having an anybody in his house anymore...</p><p>“May I use your restroom, Lieutenant?”</p><p>“What the fuck for?” He realized after he said it that it wasn’t exactly the polite thing to say, but fuck it. It was an android, and as far as he knew, androids didn’t shit.</p><p>Connor tilted its head just a little and there was just the tiniest twitch of its eyebrows.Hank didn’t know why it was so unsettling. He hid his discomfort behind a spoonful of cereal. “I’d like to clean up a little. I don’t have any of my daily maintenance supplies but at the very least I should appear professional. Don’t you think?”</p><p>Why was he even talking about it? “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Just don’t take all day.”</p><p>“Got it, Lieutenant.” It walked off and Hank tried to ignore that he had it in his house. Just like a new phone or a fancy kitchen mixer he would never use. That was it.</p><p>It was just creepy how lifelike it looked.</p><p>He thought back to the last time it had died and shuddered. It had given him a nightmare once. Just one. Connor’s blood had been red and for some reason there’d been glass instead of snow. His chest had been all carved out and Hank’d tried to stop the bleeding. Hank’s hands had gone right through and touched his beating heart. Fucking stupid dream.</p><p>Hank plopped his cereal bowl down on the table and sat to eat and drink his coffee. Sumo put his head on Hank’s lap and drooled. Ugh.</p><p>“Get off... Stupid mutt...” Hank scratched Sumo’s head vigorously then pushed him off and tucked his chair in. Last thing he needed was to look like he’d pissed himself.</p><p>---</p><p>The clouds in the sky were a pleasing mixture of white and pale blue-grey, and the sky had lightened enough to make everything seem... crisp. Lieutenant Anderson’s boots made crunching sounds as they broke through a thin layer of ice. Connor stepped beside his footprint and listened to the sound then looked up at the clouds again in wonder.</p><p>The Lieutenant’s voice got his attention. “Connor! Move your ass. What the heck are you looking at up there?”</p><p>“The clouds...” Connor answered, looking back up. “They’re moving so fast.”</p><p>“What...? Oh.” There was a pause that turned into a silence and Connor tookthe time to continue his admiration. The Lieutenant’s footsteps had stopped so he wasn’t leaving him behind. The sun was still early in its ascent and on one side, if he turned, he could see that the sky was darker. On the other, it was pale and bright. There were no leaves on the trees here but branches moved with the wind. It was amazing how quickly the clouds moved even though their changes in shape were gradual. How did they not just blow away? When he looked back at eye-level Lieutenant Anderson was looking at him, so Connor offered him a smile.</p><p>“It’s nice,” he said.</p><p>“...Yeah,” Lieutenant Anderson said slowly as he turned away. There was something strange about the way he said it, but Connor couldn’t place what it could have meant so he followed him to his car quietly. Lieutenant Anderson didn’t seem inclined to conversation, but Connor could see the sky through the window and the people as they drove the short way to the precinct. They had so many colours of clothes...It was a contrast to the greys that hid behind the advertisements and signs and it was reminiscent of the garden. The station itself was more like CyberLife: sleek and modern. Connor followed Lieutenant Anderson’s lead getting out of the vehicle and took some satisfaction from closing the door with just enough force. He took a breath and straightened his tie. Focus.</p><p>The mission is what matters.</p><p>You will be good, Connor told himself. You will accomplish your mission. He always accomplished his mission... Unless he died trying.</p><p>“Wow,” Detective Reed said as Connor and Lieutenant Anderson entered their work area. It drew Connor’s attention and he looked at the detective curiously. “So, you took your new toy home with you huh, Anderson? You sure have changed your tune pretty quick.”</p><p>“Shut it,” Lieutenant Anderson retorted. He hardly glanced in his direction on his way to his desk and he shook the snow off of his coat before draping it over the back of his chair. He didn’t make use of the locker room, Connor noted and he wondered if he could make himself useful by stowing the Lieutenant’s things away for him.</p><p>“Do you think that he hates me a little less?” Connor asked. He diverted his path from toward his own desk to Detective Reed’s. This iteration was trulydoing better than the last if that were the case, and the restrictions were worthwhile. He really had been defective when he’d first been released into the field, but he was being corrected now.</p><p>This was good. He had an active case to work on and he was integrating.</p><p>It was good.</p><p>Detective Reed smiled widely. “I think he doesn’t hate getting his dick sucked.”</p><p>“I don’t understand.” In the background, a few officers snickered and Connor surmised that it had been a joke. He thought it over and adjusted his reply.</p><p>&gt;&gt; ERROR: UNSUPPORTED DIALOGUE</p><p>Of course. Thwarted, Connor rebuked himself internally and adjusted his focus to the prompts on his HUD.</p><p>Polite</p><p>Leave</p><p>Question</p><p>Ironic</p><p>“Excuse me. I should be getting to work.”</p><p>Detective Reed snorted. “I bet. Fuck off back under Anderson’s desk.” The detective turned away and Connor was dismissed from his attention as easily as that. The whole exchange seemed pointless with a resolution like that. Nevertheless, Connor left and went to sit at his own desk. Across from him, Lieutenant Anderson was throwing his coat over his chair and dropping himself into it with a groan.</p><p>“Right,” the Lieutenant sighed. “Let’s see what shit’s waiting today...”</p><p>Connor straightened his jacket and considered their position. His position. The mission was what mattered.</p><p>He might never see the outside world again if he failed. Amanda would be disappointed. The DPD would be sending another report on him in a few days provided that he lasted that long... He glanced around at the milling officers and the civilians waiting for an audience. What would they think about him now? His social integration was one of his main features but it hadn’t been functioning correctly last time. With a measure of concern and anxiety, he dedicated some processing power toward monitoring the conversations in the room. They might have something to say about him.</p><p>“Jesus,” Lieutenant Anderson grumbled and Connor looked at him.</p><p>“Is everything alright, Lieutenant?”</p><p>“Bullshit. Where’s the fucking amber alert? What the fuck?” His hand fell heavily onto the desk with a bang and he stood up. He drew the attention of some, but no-one answered. Connor quickly initiated an interface with the Lieutenant’s terminal and scanned the night’s activity.</p><p>“The case is still open and there’s no report of a child being found,” Connor observed. The recordings of the non-emergency and emergency calls were secured but Connor flitted his way past the barriers the way he solved Amanda’s puzzles. He searched for key words. “We haven’t received any tips from the public. The patrol cars were still on alert for the android and the child.”</p><p>“What gives?” Lieutenant Anderson snarled. “Fowler better have a good answer...”</p><p>Connor watched him stalk toward the Captain’s office...</p><p>FOLLOW LIEUTENANT ANDERSON</p><p>... then glanced at his terminal.</p><p>REVIEW THE OPEN CASES</p><p>He chose to follow and he slipped in the door behind the Lieutenant then let it shut quietly behind him with barely a whisper from the well-oiled hinges.</p><p>“What gives, Jeffrey?” Lieutenant Anderson demanded. Captain Fowler put a hand over the earpiece of his phone and glared, then took a moment to excuse himself from the conversation. When he hung up he continued glaring.</p><p>“I could ask the same thing! Why the hell are you barging into my office?”</p><p>“My case is why! The little girl. I don’t give a shit if she’s the victim’s or not: if he had a kid staying there and now she’s gone with footprints going right from her fucking window I want to know what happened! I specifically made sure that the right protocols were followed so tell me: why don’t I see an active amber alert?”</p><p>Captain Fowler sat up straight and leaned forward against his desk. “This is a sensitive case, Hank.”</p><p>“A fucking kid! And an android’s got her!”</p><p>“Who the hell is going to believe that an android kidnapped a kid?” Captain Fowler demanded. “Hell, I don’t even believe it! It’s not like you to jump to conclusions. Let missing persons handle it and back off.”</p><p>Connor frowned.</p><p>“You assigned me to android crimes, now I try to investigate a possible android crime and you shut me out?” Lieutenant Anderson asked.</p><p>“I’m not shutting you out, Hank, I’m asking you to let the other folks do their jobs. Find me the killer and if it’s an android, then you can say ‘I told you so’, got it?”</p><p>“If it gets away because of this, I’ll be saying more than that,” Lieutenant Anderson said with a warning note in his voice.</p><p>“Captain Fowler,” Connor interjected, “with all due respect, I would appreciate the chance to follow this case through to its conclusion and finding the child goes hand in hand with finding the perpetrator.” After his destruction leaving him out of the loop for weeks, it felt like his start at the department was much more lacklustre than he’d hoped. “We can do this.” He could do it.</p><p>Captain Fowler didn’t look at him. “Don’t you threaten me, Hank, you’re on thin ice as it is. The murder is all yours, collaborate with missing persons if you want to, but you don’t call the shots on how they decide to do their jobs. Do you understand me?”</p><p>“I understand that something stinks,” Lieutenant Anderson scowled. “I want to know everything they’ve got, I want to know where they’ve got their guys, and I want to know when one of them takes a God damned shit.”</p><p>“Fine,” said Captain Fowler. “I’ll get you in contact so get out of here and let me work. RK800, stay here.”</p><p>So Connor stayed but he followed Lieutenant Anderson with his eyes while he left before returning his attention to the Captain. He stood straight and kept a respectful expression on his face. “You wanted to speak with me?”</p><p>“You’ve got orders. You might be shit at following Anderson’s but I outrank him so listen up: you’re to stick with Anderson. I don’t give a damn if he tells you to leave; you stay with him... and, if he seems like he’s getting too invested in this missing kid, I need you to distract him. Keep him focused on the killer.”</p><p>Connor logged the orders but couldn’t help but to ask: “What makes you believe that the child and the killer are in separate locations?”</p><p>“I don’t, but I need Anderson keeping his perspective...” Captain Fowler sighed and it rumbled deeply in his chest.</p><p>Connor studied him. Captain Fowler was tired, which seemed to be his usual, and he was tense. He wasn’t happy to be having this conversation. Connor’s eyes drifted around the office: constant reports streaming on the wall, stacks of physical paperwork, pictures that were likely of his family, cards wishing him a Merry Christmas... “I understand, Captain. I’ll ensure that the Lieutenant remains focused on our primary objective.”</p><p>“Good, now get out.”</p><p>Connor let himself out of the office and took measured steps down the stairs. He could see Lieutenant Anderson at his desk, angrily rearranging things to little effect. Connor approached and watched him for a moment then leaned against the desk.</p><p>“Move,” Lieutenant Anderson snarled and gave Connor a push on the arm. Obligingly, Connor stood up straight and he watched with some disappointment while the Lieutenant threw the small tree on his desk into the garbage. He looked at his own desk and considered how empty it was but when he began to stoop to retrieve the tree, his programming reminded him to INVESTIGATE THE CASE. Connor returned his attention to the Lieutenant.</p><p>“I understand that you’re upset... I was frustrated when I learned that Mr. Henson’s murder had been given to someone else.”</p><p>His attempt at sympathy only soured the Lieutenant’s disposition to him. He was ignored and the Lieutenant picked up the receiver of his old-fashioned desk phone. It was wired and powered by electricity... Connor turned away and started to walk toward the break room. Making coffee was a secondary task that seemed to please whatever human he offered it to. Maybe he could improve the Lieutenant’s mood...</p><p>“Oh! Hey! Connor?” Officer Wilson asked. He trotted a few steps closer to approach him and smiled uncertainly. “Is, uh, is Hank using you right now?”</p><p>“I don’t have any active tasks,” Connor said then decided to explain: “We have a case to investigate, but no leads at the moment...”</p><p>“Oh, okay, cool. Cool. Hey, Hank!” Officer Wilson called. “Can I use your android a second?” Lieutenant Anderson frowned and waved a hand at them then turned away with the phone pressed to his head. “Sweet... Come on, I got paperwork coming out of my ears.” It was a short walk to Officer Wilson’s desk. “Think you can get these things logged and submitted for me? Everything’s right on the forms...”</p><p>“Well well,” Detective Reed said as Connor walked past. “What’s the deal, Chris? You need some plastic to do your work?”</p><p>Officer Wilson just smiled crookedly and chuckled. “Hell yeah, man. I want to actually leave on time. You wouldn’t believe how many calls I got about thefts and stuff last night. Attempted robberies.”</p><p>“Tch,” Detective Reed scoffed. Connor took the tablet that Officer Wilson offered to him.</p><p>“I’ll be at my desk. Is that alright?”</p><p>“Yeah, man! Thanks a bunch.”</p><p>Connor postponed the coffee task, made his way back to his desk with the tablet and sat down. It didn’t seem right to use the Lieutenant’s or Detective Reed’s credentials, so he mimicked Officer Wilson’s instead when he interfaced with the terminal and he flipped through the reports on the tablet with his other hand.</p><p>He frowned.</p><p>“Lieutenant?” He was frowning while he spoke into the phone with barely concealed frustration and he didn’t look in Connor’s direction.</p><p>With building excitement, Connor set the tablet down and hurriedly transferred the information he’d read into the DPD’s system. “Lieutenant! We have a lead!”</p><p>“Can’t you see I’m on the phone?!” Lieutenant Anderson demanded with one hand over the mouth piece. Connor reached forward and pressed the button to disconnect the call. “Hey!”</p><p>“Come on, Lieutenant! There was an incident of petty theft reported last night and the cashier said that the culprit was an android in the company of a small girl. It’s in the Ravendale district. We have to go now! If we’re lucky, then they won’t have gone far.”</p><p>“Are you fucking...!” the Lieutenant grimaced and then grabbed his coat. “Come on...”</p><p>Anticipation made the world seem more crisp as his programming automatically adjusted his basal settings for pursuit and investigation, and determination set his jaw and heightened his awareness further. He grabbed the tablet from his desk and hurried to put it down on Officer Wilson’s desk. “It’s done, Officer Wilson! Thank you!”</p><p>Officer Wilson’s confused “you’re welcome” was left behind while Connor hurried for the exit.</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Announcement!</h2></a>
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    <p>Hey, everyone!</p><p>Thank you for sticking with this story. I realized after these last couple of chapters that I just wasn't happy with the flow, so there is now a rewrite posted here on AO3. It has two chapters so far, and I'm pleased to say that it's a lot easier to write. The underlying theme of the story is the same, but the interactions and events over top of it are being changed and I think that it's different enough that giving them a read won't be too boring.</p><p>I hope that you enjoy! I want to make sure that you have the best possible time reading :)  Sorry for the false start and thank you for all the encouragement.</p>
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